Now That Facebook, YouTube And Apple Have Come For Alex Jones, Guess Who They Are Coming For Next?

August 6th was one of darkest days in the history of the Internet.  When I learned that Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Pinterest and others had colluded to take down content from Alex Jones all on the same day, I knew exactly what was happening.  They timed their attack so that it would hit the press at the beginning of the weekly news cycle on Monday so that their purge would have maximum societal impact.  And the fact that there was such overt collusion was obviously meant to send a message.  We were supposed to understand that if they can do this to Alex Jones, they can do it to any of us, and so we better shut up and fall in line.  I can’t even begin to tell you how sick I feel right now.  The big tech giants have made it abundantly clear how they feel about all of us, and there is no future for alternative points of view on any of their platforms.

The current purge of conservative voices has been going on for months, but this is the biggest bombshell by far.  The following excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article is a typical example of how the mainstream media covered this story…

Major technology companies including Apple, Facebook and YouTube deleted years of content from conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars platforms over allegations of hate speech, a sudden clampdown that is fueling the growing debate over how big technology companies choose to censor.

The move was unusual for its sweep and speed, suggesting a new assertiveness by technology companies that in the past have worked to avoid alienating conservatives, who often assert that left-leaning Silicon Valley is biased against them. The removals appeared to be prompted by more users flagging Infowars content for policy violations.

In addition to the “big three”, Spotify and Pinterest pulled down content from Infowars as well, and there is no way that this could have been done simultaneously unless it was planned well in advance.  Lawyers have to be consulted, CEOs have to give their approval, etc.  This was a cold-blooded move that was carefully calculated down to the finest details.

So is there anything that conservatives can do?

Well, Mike Adams has suggested that these tech companies could be prosecuted for conspiracy…

This coordinated, illegal censorship is clear proof of an organized criminal racket being conducted by the tech giants. The RICO Act allows for federal prosecution of such criminal conspiracy.

The internet Dark Ages has now descended upon us, where radical left-wing tech giants run by deranged, mentally ill communists will decide whether your content qualifies as “hate speech.” What is hate speech? It’s anything uttered by a conservative.

I think that he is theoretically correct, but I doubt that it will ever actually happen.

Right now, the global elite do not have control of the White House, but they have discovered a powerful new weapon in the tech companies.  They are trying to use this new weapon to smash Alex Jones and other top conservative voices, and they are doing it with a tyrannical flair that is absolutely frightening.  I think that it was quite appropriate that the official WikiLeaks Twitter account made a parallel between this purge and an old Star Wars movie…

The empire strikes back: Apple, Spotify, Facebook and Google/Youtube all purge Infowars/Alex Jones. Yes, Infowars has frequent nonsense, but also a state power critique. Which publisher in the world with millions of subscribers is next to be wiped out for cultural transgression?

And it is quite noteworthy that this comes almost exactly three months before the mid-term elections.

Do you think that is just a coincidence?

After all of the uproar about “election interference”, now the big tech companies are overtly doing it very publicly and in a way that nobody can misunderstand.

The biggest reason why they are lashing out at Alex Jones, Mike Adams and a whole host of other top conservative voices is because Donald Trump never would have gotten elected without them.  I guess they figure that if they can start silencing some of those voices that they can turn future elections in their favor.

If it was just a few conservative voices that were being censored, that would be one thing.  But the truth is that hundreds and hundreds of conservatives have had Facebook pages taken down, YouTube accounts terminated and Twitter accounts shadowbanned.  I won’t repeat all of the information that I have previously published on this topic in this article.  Instead, if you would like to learn more I would recommend checking out some of my previous articles…

-“This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet

-“Governments And Social Media Companies Are Collaborating To Censor Anyone That Would Dare To Question Mainstream Media Narratives

-“The Big Social Media Companies Are Being Used As A Weapon To Advance The Agenda Of The New World Order

-“The Censorship Is Real – EndOfTheAmericanDream.com Is Being Completely Blocked By Library Internet Filters

In the end, this is not about Alex Jones.

This is about a once free society that is becoming more Orwellian with each passing day.

Now that they have come for Alex Jones, they aren’t going to stop.

It might not be tomorrow, but eventually they are going to come for you.

I would like to end this article with a few words from Dr. Michael Brown’s excellent article about all of this censorship…

Let me repeat what I said in my earlier article about Infowars: Whether you’re an Infowars fan or you find their work distasteful, their potential removal from YouTube should concern you.

Otherwise, soon enough, we’ll have our own version of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, which will now sound something like this:

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out­—because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Independent Journalist Exposes How Social Media Companies Are Systematically Silencing Conservative Voices

Ben Swann has done it again.  A new video that he just released about the stunning purge of conservative voices that we are now witnessing has already been viewed more than 24,000 times on YouTube alone.  I have been writing about all of this censorship quite a bit recently as well, but up until now I have not revealed the true extent to which it has hit me personally.  Like President Trump and other prominent conservatives, engagement on my personal Facebook profile has fallen dramatically.  We are working like mad to keep engagement up on our official Facebook campaign page, but it has been a real battle, and today Facebook just banned me again from posting to groups for a few days.  The funny thing is that I had barely shared anything recently.  On Twitter, I have been told by a social media expert that my account has been “shadowbanned”, and that probably explains why engagement on Twitter is only a small fraction of what it once was.  Of course dozens of other prominent conservatives are suffering the same kind of censorship, and it is absolutely imperative that we stand up against this unprecedented assault on our ability to communicate with one another.

It has become quite obvious that the big social media giants want to systematically exclude any voices that they do not like from the marketplace of ideas.  In his new video, Ben Swann points a finger at the biggest offenders

“Is there an Internet purge of conservative voices or voices of dissension online?” Swann begins in a recent “Reality Check” report on the issue. “Some say yes, and the purge is being pushed by YouTube, owned by Google, by Facebook, and by Twitter.”

They don’t call them “the thought police”, but that is precisely what the small armies of “moderators” that the social media giants are hiring are turning out to be.  For example, late last year YouTube announced that it would bring on “10,000 new moderators” to “flag content”

“Of course, all of this comes after YouTube announced in December that it would hire some 10,000 new moderators to flag content,” Swann reported. “And those moderators have been flagging at a stunning rate.”

He noted further that in several cases the moderators were pulling entire channels “without any advance warning” whatsoever, and that most of those channels were deemed “either pro-gun or conservative.”

If you have not seen Swann’s new video yet, you can watch it here.  Following the video, other content creators commented on how they have been affected by the recent social media censorship…

-“Hey Ben, just thought I would share my story. I have now been removed from YouTube 6 times in the past few years. I am non-violent, don’t cuss, don’t show blood or gore, and I use mainstream media news clips that usually talk about these large shootings that are being used as a reason to change gun laws. I built my old channels to 10 thousand subscribers and 2.5 Million views twice, only to have my accounts removed.”

-“THEY DELETED MY 300K VIEWS VIDEO SHOWING HOW CNN LIED ABOUT THE CHEMICAL ATTACK IN SYRIA. IT’S HAPPENING, I GOT A STRIKE FOR IT.”

-“They even hit vdeos I had set to private that weren’t even viewable by the public. To keep my channel I deleted over 300 videos spanning back 2 years and that is lot counting the half dozen plus that YouTube yanked.”

-“I received 2 strikes in 48 hours on videos exposing crimes of the US government (that had been up for 2-3 years), which is what all my videos do. I deleted the videos from my channel to save this account for contact reasons but, It still might get deleted anyways.”

-“I deactivated my Facebook. They were instantly removing my comments. My comments had nothing to do with anything, but I did try to post a conservative video in a comment box and after that ALL of my every day comments were instantly removed and marked as spam. I am also Libertarian. I can’t believe Health Ranger’s channel was removed. I think it is awful what they are doing. Taking away support is fine, but don’t take down the channel!”

I believe that it is fundamentally un-American for social media giants to try to use their power to silence conservative voices.

These big tech companies built empires by allowing everyone to have a voice, but now they are systematically attempting to exclude conservatives from the conversation, and we should all find that extremely offensive.

If you want someone in Washington that will fight as hard as he possibly can against this kind of censorship, I hope that you will help us win our race for Congress on May 15th

Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate

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Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address…

Michael Snyder For Congress
PO Box 1136
Bonners Ferry, ID 83805

We are in the middle of the final money bomb of the 2018 primary campaign, and you will be able to track the progress of the money bomb on Swampbomb.com.

If you live in north Idaho, I hope that you will come out for the kickoff event for the last 60 days of our campaign in Sandpoint on the evening of March 15th.  And you can see the remainder of my speaking schedule for the month of March right here.

We are in a battle for the soul of our nation, and the left is fighting dirty.

All throughout history the left has always sought to silence dissenting voices when they have taken power, and now they are trying it in this country.

Of course we are not about to let that happen, and the left is in for a very rude awakening during the 2018 mid-term elections.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

Are The Social Media Giants Trying To Steal The 2018 Elections By Censoring Conservative Websites?

Nobody is disputing the fact that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants are censoring conservative material.  In fact, this is probably the largest purge of conservative voices in the history of the Internet.  Obviously this is going to cause large numbers of people to stop using their platforms, so why would they do this?  Well, to some conservatives the answer is obvious.  These social media giants watched Donald Trump use their platforms extremely effectively in 2016, and many believe that they are absolutely determined to never let that happen again.  In fact, Mike Adams of Natural News is completely convinced that there is a concerted effort by these social media giants to steal the 2018 elections…

The realization is suddenly obvious: The Google / YouTube selective “censorship rampage” that has targeted conservative websites and content creators is a brazen, illegal scheme to interfere with U.S. elections and steal the 2018 mid-terms.

The systematic silencing of conservative views is necessary, of course, for Democrats to win enough seats to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the mid-term elections. Once control is established, Democrats will immediately move to impeach President Trump. Although the Senate would not likely prosecute that impeachment, the mere achievement of the U.S. House declaring “impeachment” would be enough to convince most brainwashed news consumers that Trump is somehow a guilty criminal (nobody will remember that Bill Clinton was also impeached by the House). From there, the 2020 presidential election is also stolen, and Democrats land their selected tyrant in the White House just in time for Ginsberg’s retirement from SCOTUS.

If voices on the left were being censored to the same degree as conservative voices, it would be really hard to make such an argument.

But the truth is that the numbers show that conservative voices are being hit extremely hard by the censorship while liberal publishers have been mostly “unaffected”

Facebook’s January 12 announcement that it would begin to de-prioritize news publishers and their posts in users’ News Feeds has had a surprisingly profound and partisan impact. According to The Outline’s analysis of Facebook engagement data obtained from research tool BuzzSumo, conservative and right-wing publishers (such as Breitbart, Fox News, and Gateway Pundit) were hit the hardest in the weeks following the announcement, with Facebook engagement totals for February dropping as much as 55 percent for some, while the engagement numbers of most predominantly liberal publishers remained unaffected.

And this even applies to politicians as well.  For example, President Trump’s engagement on Facebook has fallen 45 percent since the algorithm change…

The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump’s engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.

In contrast, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) do not appear to have suffered a comparable decline in Facebook engagement.

Top conservative Facebook pages with daily traffic in the millions have seen 75% to 95% drop in traffic.
Young Cons, Western Journalism, SarahPalin.com, Independent Journal Review, Right Wing News, and several others have seen dramatic loss in traffic.

Needless to say, my website (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/) has been affected as well.

So what can we do?

We can fight back.  One of the primary ways that we can do that is by electing pro-Trump candidates all over the nation in 2018.  Right now I am engaged in an extremely close race with three guys that did not want Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination in 2016, and I need your help to win on May 15th.

It is fundamentally wrong for the social media giants to pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas.  I will fight online censorship as hard as I can in Washington, and if you believe in what we are trying to do I hope that you will stand with us.

Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate

Donate By Paypal: https://donorbox.org/michael-snyder-for-congress

Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address…

Michael Snyder For Congress
PO Box 1136
Bonners Ferry, ID 83805

Whenever radical leftists have taken power anywhere in the world, they have always tried to shut down free speech.

They want to follow the same formula in the United States, but we are not going to allow them to do that.

There are millions upon millions of red-blooded Americans that still greatly love this nation, and this silent majority is rising up to take our country back.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet

In recent weeks, we have witnessed an unprecedented social media crackdown on conservative voices.  YouTube’s war with Alex Jones has gotten the most attention, but literally hundreds of conservative content creators have had their accounts penalized, suspended or deleted by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants.  There appears to be a coordinated effort to target conservative viewpoints, because similar voices on the left are not receiving equal treatment.  If I win my race for Congress on May 15th, I am going to make fighting this sort of censorship one of my top priorities once I get to Washington.

How would you feel if you spent years creating videos and building up a subscriber base only to have all of that work wiped out in a single moment by a leftist YouTube moderator?

Sadly, that is precisely what is happening to dozens upon dozens of conservatives right now…

Writing for Polygon.com, Julia Alexander noted that, “Whenever YouTube institutes a tougher moderation stance, a common debate emerges over censorship—especially from notable conservative voices.”

Specifically, she explained, “Questions over YouTube’s moderators and the power they hold were raised this week after notable conservative pundits, gun advocates, conspiracy channels and other right-wing voices received community strikes or were locked out of their channels. Creators who are affected by lockouts, strikes and suspensions are referring to it as the ‘YouTube Purge,’ claiming that YouTube is purging all right-wing or pro-gun content. The move follows the company’s attempt to clamp down on dangerous content following the Parkland shooting.”

One of the most disturbing examples of censorship was what happened to the Health Ranger channel.  Mike Adams is a personal friend, and I am extremely upset about what YouTube has done to him

As we reported over the weekend, YouTube terminated the entire Health Ranger video channel on Saturday, wiping out over 1,700 videos and approximately 350K+ subscribers. This was done, of course, as part of the YouTube left-wing PURGE now being carried out against non-establishment speakers who are being targeted for political reasons.

YouTube’s censorship rampage also wiped out all my videos on the donkeys I rescued, the range-free chickens I raise and even the beautiful ice crystals I captured on video over the winter. In its censorship sweep, YouTube is obliterating thousands of videos without cause, violating the civil rights of informative internet users and functioning as a criminal techno-cartel.

There is absolutely no reason for YouTube to do this.  Mike Adams has literally helped millions of people through his work, and I am urging all of my readers to contact YouTube and demand that they restore his channel immediately.

Of course YouTube is not the only one that is cracking down on conservative voices.  Here are a few examples of what Facebook has been doing

Young Cons: This very popular conservative news site had millions of daily readers during the recent election, and the site received nearly all its traffic from Facebook (Lesson: Never put all your marketing eggs in one basket). Facebook has been increasingly censoring Young Cons stories since 2016; now the site struggles mightily and regularly switches domains in order to maintain traffic.

SaraPalin.com: At one point the former GOP VP nominee and Alaska governor’s website was serving up stories to her four million Facebook followers, but she, too, had to begin switching domains in order to maintain traffic.

Right Wing News: This site grew to massive proportions over the past few years, in large part thanks to its meteoric popularity on Facebook. During one week in 2015, the site’s Facebook page reached 133 million people. The site was driving about the same amount of web traffic as some of the biggest newspapers in the U.S. But since 2016 Facebook began blocking traffic to the site; its owner, John Hawkins, announced he would shut it down in January (it’s still online but the content is not regularly updated).

Independent Journal Review: This, too, was a large conservative news and information source, but because it was overly reliant on Facebook traffic, the site had to terminate a number of its employees last week, leaving the fate of the Millennial-focused site in doubt.

And Twitter has been censoring conservatives as well.

In particular, Twitter seems to really dislike pro-life activists

Pro-life group Live Action cried foul in 2017 after Twitter demanded it delete pro-life images, such as fetal ultrasounds, from its Twitter feed and website before allowing the group to run advertisements. Live Action refused the request.

Another pro-life group, the Susan B. Anthony List, was barred in October from running a video advertisement, because it used the phrase “killing babies” to refer to abortion. “No advertiser is permitted to use the phrase ‘killing babies,’” Twitter told the group.

That same month, Twitter blocked an advertisement by Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign for Senate in Tennessee. Twitter objected to one line Blackburn said: “I’m 100% pro-life. I fought Planned Parenthood, and we stopped the sale of baby body parts –thank God.”

If you don’t stand up when you see others being censored, then please don’t complain when the social media giants censor you as well.  I think that Dr. Michael Brown made this point exceedingly well in his most recent article

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out—because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This is why we need good liberty-minded people to run for office all over the nation.

If we do not fight back, this sort of oppression is only going to get worse.  Right at this moment I am engaged in an extremely tight race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and if you want me to go to Washington and defend our free speech rights, please consider making a contribution because we desperately need it right now…

Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate

Donate By Paypal: https://donorbox.org/michael-snyder-for-congress

Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address…

Michael Snyder For Congress
PO Box 1136
Bonners Ferry, ID 83805

In the entire history of the Internet, we have never seen this sort of a coordinated purge before.

The left believes that they are going to win, but we are definitely not going to allow that to happen.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

How Has The U.S. Government Been Getting User Data From Major Internet Companies?

Prism****IMPORTANT UPDATE****  Apparently the big Internet companies are not as “innocent” in all of this as they originally led us to believe.  So this additional information changes some of the conclusions that I reached in my original article.  It appears that some of the biggest Internet companies have been cooperating with the government in this data collection effort at least to a certain extent.  The following is from an article in the New York Times that describes how the U.S. government has been getting user data from major Internet companies…

The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.

****END OF UPDATE****

The U.S. government has been hacking in to the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple and has been taking their user data without their knowledge or consent.  According to the Washington Post, the information being stolen includes “audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs”.  This program is known as PRISM, and it was first revealed by the Washington Post on Thursday.  Since the story broke, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has admitted that PRISM exists and so has Barack Obama.  The Washington Post initially claimed that all of the Internet companies were willingly handing over their user data to the government.  Now we are learning that is NOT true.  In fact, all of the Internet companies named in the Washington Post story have denied knowing about PRISM or ever giving the federal government permission to directly access their servers.  So this means that the U.S. government has been stealing massive amounts of user data from the largest Internet companies in the world without their permission.  Of course this is highly illegal and it directly violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but you can bet that the Obama administration is going to do everything that it can to get the courts to “make it legal”.  Hopefully the revelation of this program will be enough to get the American people to realize that we are rapidly being transformed into a Big Brother police state that is descending into tyranny.

Barack Obama has described the systematic gathering of cell phone records and the Internet spying that the federal government has been doing as “modest encroachments” that we should all just accept as part of the price of living in a modern world, but if we allow the government to get away with this, where will it end?

Even if we had a total “Big Brother” society where the government watched everything that we did 24 hours a day, bad people would still do bad things.  There would still be terror attacks and great tragedies.  No matter how much the government intrudes into our lives, it can never guarantee us 100% safety.

Those that founded the United States understood this.  They did not want this country to be turned into a police state.  That is why they guaranteed us some very important protections in the Bill of Rights.  If the government wants to do a search, there are some very important procedures that must be followed first.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration appears to believe that the Constitution does not apply to user data on the Internet.  The NSA is apparently hacking into Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple and taking whatever they want without ever getting permission from those companies.

You can bet that there are some very, very angry executives at those companies right now that are trying to figure out how to respond to these revelations.

All of these companies have vehemently denied that they were involved.  At this point, there is no reason to doubt their very strong denials.

For example, the following is what 

Dear Google users—

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has issued a similar denial.  He insists that Facebook never even heard of PRISM until Thursday…

I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM:

Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn’t even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure.

We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It’s the only way to protect everyone’s civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term.

So how has the U.S. government been getting this user data if they do not have the cooperation of these large Internet companies?

They have been stealing it.

Is this the kind of society that we want to have?  Do we really want the government to be free to hack into the servers of Internet companies and take user data any time that it wants?

And guess what?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the NSA has also been gathering massive amounts of credit card data as well…

The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency’s activities.

So if you ever bought something embarrassing with a credit card, there is a very good chance that the NSA knows about it.

If you don’t like where all of this is headed, then now is the time to stand up and say something about it.

Sadly, the truth is that most of our politicians see absolutely nothing wrong with our current system.  The following is what Barack Obama said in response to the recent revelations about the NSA

“You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society,” he said. “I think that on balance, we have established a policy and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable with.”

Do you feel comfortable with the fact that the NSA is hacking into major Internet companies and stealing their user data?

I know that I definitely am not.

I think that the journalist that originally broke the story about how the government is systematically gathering our phone records summed up what many of us are feeling right now pretty well

“There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world,” charged Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the British newspaper “The Guardian,” speaking on CNN. “That is not hyperbole. That is their objective.”

What do you think?

Is all of this government spying good for America or bad for America?

Please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment below…

 

Nothing Is Stable Anymore

The world is becoming a very unstable place, and the pace at which things are changing all around us has become absolutely mind-numbing.  In fact, change has become one of the only constants in today’s world.  Once upon a time, people in the United States could actually make 20 or 30 year plans and feel confident about achieving them.  But now, nothing is stable anymore.  The financial crisis showed us that some of the biggest corporations on the globe can collapse in a single day.  The events of the past few weeks have shown us that entire governments can be brought down in a single week.  We live in a world where there are now very few “guarantees” that you can count on.  One of the only things that is guaranteed is that technology and information will continue to grow at exponential speeds.  This year, the total amount of information produced on electronic devices around the globe is projected to be more than a zettabyte.  A zettabyte is equivalent to one sextillion bytes.  In other words, imagine a one with more than 21 zeroes following it.

Many of the things that we take for granted today didn’t even exist a few short years ago.  Facebook has only been with us since 2004.  YouTube has only been with us since 2005.  Can you imagine a world where those two websites did not exist?

We live in a world of information overload.  Once upon a time it would have been possible to go to sleep for a decade and wake up and everything would still be pretty much the same.  But today if you were to do that you would be in for a case of severe culture shock.

Do you remember when you could buy a set of encyclopedias and the information in them would still be good a decade or two later?

Well, things do not work that way anymore.

In fact, most of the articles on this website will be obsolete a month from now.

In today’s world, you really have to think twice before you say that something is “not possible”.

A few months ago, it was absolutely inconceivable that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would declare to the world that he has “spent enough time serving Egypt“.

Yet here we are.

One week the government of Tunisia seemed perfectly stable and the next week it was toppled.

Do any of you out there still think that you can make realistic “plans for the future” in today’s world?

Once upon a time in America, many of us were taught that if we worked really hard in school we could get a great job with a great company.  We were promised that if we were faithful to that company for 30 or 40 years that we would be treated fairly and given a good pension.

Well, in today’s world you might as well crumple up that plan and throw it into the wastebasket.

There is no such thing as a stable job anymore.  Businesses are coming into existence and going out of existence faster than ever before.  Today, one out of every four Americans workers has been with their empl0yer for less than a year.

Most Americans still don’t really understand that they are now part of a global economy.  They keep thinking that things were the way they used to be.  They keep thinking that the U.S. economy is invincible.

Well, those days are long gone.  The United States is being deindustrialized at lightning speed.  Tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of jobs have been sent overseas.  China, once a complete economic backwater, is now kicking the crap out of us on the global economic stage.

Our financial system is certainly on incredibly shaky ground.  Will any of us ever forget what happened in 2008?

Do any of us actually believe that it can’t happen again?

Our health care system is also incredibly unstable.  Today, 46 million Americans have absolutely no health insurance.  That means that 46 million Americans are just one major injury or illness away from financial ruin with no protection whatsoever.

Not that those that actually have health insurance are protected.  According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.  Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that did have health insurance.

So just because you have health insurance does not mean anything.  One bad accident or one really bad disease and you could be totally wiped out.

Isn’t that comforting?

But the truth is that our entire economy is on the verge of total collapse.

World famous investor Harry Schultz recently published the last issue of his legendary financial newsletter.  After 45 years, the following is how Schultz summed up the economic collapse that we are now facing….

“Roughly speaking, the mess we are in is the worst since 17th century financial collapse. Comparisons with the 1930’s are ludicrous. We’ve gone far beyond that. And, alas, the courage & political will to recognize the mess & act wisely to reverse gears, is absent in U.S. leadership, where the problems were hatched & where the rot is by far the deepest.”

David Stockman, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan was quoted by Schultz as saying the following about how desperate things are about to become….

“Get some gold, beans, water, anything that Bernanke can’t destroy. Ron Paul is right. We’re entering a global monetary conflagration. If a sell-off of U.S. bonds starts, it will be an Armageddon.”

Millions of Americans have become “preppers” in recent years as they have come to realize that our economy is headed down a very dark road.

But sadly, the reality is that the vast majority of Americans are not prepared for any kind of economic or natural disaster.  As this week has shown us, just the threat of a major snow storm can wipe out store shelves in a single day.

So what would this country look like if a major disaster fundamentally changed life in America and suddenly people were desperate for food and supplies?

It is a frightening thing to think about.

As the pace of change has accelerated dramatically, the U.S. government and other governments around the world have responded by trying to get a tighter grip on everyone and everything.

To get on an airplane in the United States today, you either have to allow a security goon to use a scanner to look over your completely exposed body, or you have to allow a security goon to feel up all of your private areas with the fronts of his or her hands.

Not only that, but the U.S. government has now deployed VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams to set up security checkpoints at bus terminals, subway stations and on major highways.

The America that so many of us once loved is rapidly disappearing.

But it is not just our man-made systems that are rapidly changing.  Something seems to be happening to the entire planet.  Flooding of biblical proportions has hit Australia, Brazil, China and Pakistan over the past 12 months.  Scorching heat caused massive crop failures all over Russia last summer.  Record-setting cold temperatures and snowfalls all over the northern hemisphere have scientists scratching their heads.  On top of everything else, mass deaths of birds and fish are suddenly being reported all over the globe.

Even the crust of the earth is becoming increasingly unstable.  Did you see that volcano go off in Japan the other day?  Over the past two years it seems like volcanoes have been suddenly erupting all over the world.

Not only that, but sinkholes have become an absolute epidemic all over the planet.  Some of these sinkholes have been so large that they have swallowed entire apartment buildings.

In addition, it seems like there is a magnitude 6 or magnitude 7 earthquake somewhere in the world almost every day now.  They have become so common that the mainstream media barely even takes notice of them anymore unless one happens near a very populated area.

None of us really knows what the world is going to look like ten years from now.  What will the “new” Facebooks and YouTubes be?  Will Ben Bernanke’s reckless money printing destroy our economy by then?  Will our U.S. dollars still be of any value ten years from now?  Will there even still be a U.S. dollar?

Will we still be able to feed most of the people in the world by 2011?  Will shortages of food, water and oil start driving people crazy?  Could some amazing energy discovery completely transform society?

Who will be the president of the United States?  Will there even be a president of the United States?  Will war have erupted in the Middle East by that point?  Will the United States be in another war by then?

The truth is that things are changing so fast that it is hard to even come up with the right questions to ask.  The world is going to change faster this year than it did last year.  In 2012 the pace of change will be even faster.

So buckle up and hold on tight because this is going to be one wild ride.

For much more on how incredibly fast the pace of change is in our modern society, check out the video posted below.  It is entitled “Did You Know?” and it has been viewed more than 12 million times on YouTube….