Step by step the Rome of our times is losing its might

The bigger you are, the harder the fall and we know the fall is past due. There comes a time when even those you consider to be in the fold of the family, are no longer able to stomach the bullying and blackmail in return for the bribes you shower on them for their fake smiles and hugs.

Although, I like Google a lot, I can also see the multiple dangers of letting USA mammoths roam freely all over the earth and wage a monopoly on smaller businesses in countries other than the US. On this issue, the EU, amazingly for once, is doing the right thing.

Christopher Williams writing at TelegraphUK:
The European Parliament
approved a controversial motion in support of a break-up off Google over fears of its growing power on Thursday.
Europe's elected body has no direct power to intervene and the motion is viewed as mostly symbolic. MEPs' vote 384 to 174 in favour will, however, put pressure on the European Commission to act against Google.
The executive arm of the EU acts as the competition regulator and enforcer for the bloc and has been investigating alleged monopoly abuse by Google for several years.
Google has a roughly 90pc share of the general web search market in Europe and is accused by rivals of using that dominance to supress competition in related digital markets such as price comparison.
The "unbundling" proposed by the motion would formally split Google's main search engine from its other services, potentially including the Android smartphone operating system, which is also increasingly dominant.........

.......American politicians have leapt to the company's defence. A bipartisan letter from senior Senate and House of representatives figures emerged on Monday warning against the motion.
It said: "This and similar proposals build walls rather than bridges [and] do not appear to give full consideration to the negative effect such policies may have on the broader US-EU trade relationship."....

We are just puny little pawns in the overall diabolic scheme of things ....

that's the way I feel after reading this very informative piece. It's a long article and below are just a few selected paragraphs.

Julian Assange writing at Newsweek:
Google not what it seems

.....Only a few months before he met with me, Cohen was planning a trip to the edge of Iran in Azerbaijan to “engage the Iranian communities closer to the border,” as part of a Google Ideas’ project on “repressive societies.” In internal emails Stratfor’s vice president for intelligence, Fred Burton (himself a former State Department security official), wrote:

Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do…
[Cohen] is going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose Google’s covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov’t can then disavow knowledge and Google is left holding the shit-bag.......

.........Gen Next also backs an NGO, launched by Cohen toward the end of his State Department tenure, for bringing Internet-based global “pro-democracy activists” into the U.S. foreign relations patronage network. The group originated as the “Alliance of Youth Movements” with an inaugural summit in New York City in 2008 funded by the State Department and encrusted with the logos of corporate sponsors. The summit flew in carefully selected social media activists from “problem areas” like Venezuela and Cuba to watch speeches by the Obama campaign’s new-media team and the State Department’s James Glassman, and to network with public relations consultants, “philanthropists,” and U.S. media personalities........

......In 2011, the Alliance of Youth Movements rebranded as “Movements.org.” In 2012 Movements.org became a division of “Advancing Human Rights,” a new NGO set up by Robert L. Bernstein after he resigned from Human Rights Watch (which he had originally founded) because he felt it should not cover Israeli and U.S. human rights abuses. Advancing Human Rights aims to right Human Rights Watch’s wrong by focusing exclusively on “dictatorships.”

Cohen stated that the merger of his Movements.org outfit with Advancing Human Rights was “irresistible,” pointing to the latter’s “phenomenal network of cyber-activists in the Middle East and North Africa.” He then joined the Advancing Human Rights board, which also includes Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in occupied Afghanistan. In its present guise, Movements.org continues to receive funding from Gen Next, as well as from Google, MSNBC and PR giant Edelman, which represents General Electric, Boeing, and Shell, among others.

Google Ideas is bigger, but it follows the same game plan. Glance down the speaker lists of its annual invite-only get-togethers, such as “Crisis in a Connected World” in October 2013. Social network theorists and activists give the event a veneer of authenticity, but in truth it boasts a toxic piñata of attendees: U.S. officials, telecom magnates, security consultants, finance capitalists and foreign-policy tech vultures like Alec Ross (Cohen’s twin at the State Department)........

Google and You Tube in cold war against Russia

Not a good thing. By their vendetta against Russia because of the bullying and propaganda from the gay community and their enablers, both Google and You Tube are frustrating millions of other customers by a flood of the wrong kind of videos and news about the Sochi games... all criticizing Russia.

If you want to find stories of the marvellous opening ceremony (I don't remember anything more spectacular ever and I have never missed the openings or closing ceremonies of the Olympus for at least the last two decades)  please give both Google and YouTube a miss and go to search engines like Yahoo and Bing.  They are not playing politics.

Both Google and YouTube should bear in mind that nobody, NOBODY is too big to fail.  Remember Facebook?  Its popularity is waning now because of Twitter. Trying to please loudmouths because they make the loudest noise does not mean that you hear the other sane and sober people who prefer to remain silent ... however, both Google and You Tube should not mistake the silent masses to be pushovers and remain silent forever. We are watching the dirty tricks of the loudmouths and the dirtier ones from corporations that should not be playing politics.





Nick Miller writing at SydneyMorningHerald:
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics opening:Spectacular. Breathtaking. The XXII Winter Olympic Games are on after opening officially in a sparkling, star-studded show in Sochi. For the next 16 days the world's top athletes will be going for it, competing hard with every sinew and fiber.

Most opening ceremonies feature at least one stuff-up (remember the jammed cauldron in Sydney). In Sochi it was the fifth Olympic ring, which was supposed to join its ring mates after unfurling from a glowing snowflake but instead remained a stubborn asterisk that quite ruined the image.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had a grim look on his face as the snowflake failed to unfurl and hovered next to four open circles.
The 160-odd-minute spectacular featured 3500 fireworks, 3000 performers and took place in the purpose-built, massively expensive Fisht stadium in the coastal Olympic park.
The theme was a history of Russia, from the days of Greek legend, through the industrial revolution – not to mention the actual revolution.

Russia’s celebrated composers were celebrated, there was marching and much dancing by Bolshoi superstars including (naturally) a bit of Swan Lake performed by glowing jellyfish, and there were several hallucinogenic sequences featuring huge inflatable and mechanical devices, most of which worked properly, and some of which weren’t unintentionally terrifying.
Both the symbolism and the inflatable teapots were, for the most part, as impressive as they were impenetrable.

In the grand finale, five torch-bearers beginning with Maria Sharapova passed the Olympic flame around the stadium. They included rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva, widely rumoured to be dating Vladimir Putin, though neither have confirmed the relationship.

The final cauldron was lit by figure skater Irina Rodnina and ice hockey player Vladislav Tretyak.
Mid-ceremony, chair of the Sochi Games Dmitry Chernyshenko said the event would inspire a generation, and show the world the best his country was proud of – its hospitality and traditions.

IOC president Thomas Bach said it had been a "remarkable achievement" for Russia to build a new Olympic resort in just seven years, which “took decades in other parts of the world”..........

More pics here  and  here.  

The wonders of science and technology

Google files patent for a device which will, over and besides its primary use, compete with the lie-detecting machines of today.  Many a time, inventions are born not only out of necessity, but quite by chance.  I think this was one of them.

 Daniel Johnson writing at TelegraphUK:
Google patents lie-detecting throat tattoo    
Google tattoo would also help make conversations in noisy situations easier, as well as flashing when it thinks you are lying.
Google has filed a patent for a throat tattoo which not only blocks out background noise in a bid to make telephone conversations in crowded restaurants easier, but also flashes when it thinks you are lying.
According to the patent filed last week in the US by Motorola, who are owned by Google, the tattoo could solve the problem of strained telephone conversations in “large stadiums, busy streets, restaurants and emergency situations”.



“Communication can reasonably be improved and even enhanced with a method and system for reducing the acoustic noise in such environments and contexts”, the patent reads.
The unnamed device would serve as an “auxiliary voice input to a mobile communication device”; essentially a noise-cancelling microphone for your mobile phone which you stick on your neck.
But the tattoo’s creators also envisage it could have lie-detecting capabilities...........

Google's Blogger goes bonkers on bloggers

Why-o-why do these idiots keep trying to do one better and in the bargain frustrate bloggers who were just getting used to the last "updated" version.

Google and Yahoo are both constantly trying,  according to them,  to "give more to customers" ... what they end up giving to users is nothing but frustration while they juggle around with their codes and whatnot.

Now, they have gone and got me to use one password for all my Google accounts, and without so much as by-your-leave.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!     Doing that has thrown a wrench in my previous settings for both "internal" and public views.   Grrrrrrr!    

Edward Snowden, if he's killed by the USA or by the internet giants, will become the first true martyr of this century

He's a hero, IMO.  Another one is Wikileaks founder Assange, again IMO.  Tell the truth, shame the devil.
We keep complaining about how big and powerful those ruling over us are becoming and then when people like Assange and Snowden blow open the dirty laundry bags of the government  which should give us ammunition to hit them back with .... what do we do?  Instead of thanking the guys who helped expose the dirty laundry ... we crucify them.   Madness !!

And, don't tell me that telling military secrets is traitorous because then the enemy wins.  That might have been true long ago ... not now in our modern day and age when the government itself has become  the  biggest traitor of all by tying up the army, navy and what have you in the horror of political correctness on the battlefield.  If  the West had let their soldiers do what soldiers of the past did, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been done with within a year of their start.

Glenn Greenwald of TheGuardianUK who broke the biggest scandal ever  is live with Edward Snowden in a question/answer chat :

Edward Snowden Q and A:   NSA whistleblower answers your questions
LIVEThe whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history is answering your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations – follow it live now......

"Privacy" the word doomed for erasure from the lexicon

Our brave new world engrossing into private lives...or how powerful companies will be able to monitor us and hold entire governments to ransom.  It will happen .... and Google will be at the forefront of the blackmail.  They have already started by pulling down blogs they don't like and even if at the present time those bloggers have an avenue they can take and host their sites elsewhere ... what if Google decides to buy all those companies in one fell swoop and silence them from those avenues too?  Google is getting to be too powerful and that is why I am with China for  giving Google  only limited access to that country.  Good thinking.

Martin Hickman writing at TheIndependentUK
.....Look more closely though, and you will see Brin may be learning even more. His glasses are no ordinary over-sized ski goggles but a prototype of the latest gadget that could allow mobile data-downloading with voice commands: Google Glasses.

Not to be confused with Google Goggles, an app for its Android operating system, Google Glasses have been developed in secret by technologists at the Californian search giant.

Capable of giving an “augmented reality” to viewers – or telling them lots of stuff about who and what they are seeing, they could transform our computer habits beyond even the astonishing advances of recent years.

Thy first received an outing last year when 39-year-old Brin, who is in charge of developing Google X projects – wore them at an event for the blind in San Francisco, in April.

A few more glimpses of them were seen last summer, setting tongues wagging in tech circles, where there was intense excitement about their potential for increasing interaction with the web on the go.......

....A small screen sits on the right-size of the right lens, along with a camera, microphone and speakers, meaning, potentially, that the user could point the camera at, say, subway passengers and use facial recognition software to inform them of their name, occupation and everything else, such as the time they wore an embarrassing outfit on a train....

North Korea coming of age

It looks like the young leader has more smarts than his father did.  I looked into my crystal ball and I see Kim Jong Un replacing the old fogies around him with young energetic North Korean men and women and holding out a hand in friendship to South Korea and other nations.

From GoogleNews:
Google's executive chairman  is preparing to travel to one of the last frontiers of cyberspace: North Korea.

Eric Schmidt will be traveling to North Korea on a private, humanitarian mission led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The sources, two people familiar with the group's plans, asked not to be named because the visit had not been made public.

The trip would be the first by a top executive from U.S.-based Google, the world's largest Internet search provider, to a country considered to have the most restrictive Internet policies on the planet.

North Korea is in the midst of what leader Kim Jong Un called a modern-day "industrial revolution" in a New Year's Day speech to the nation Monday. He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory....

From TheTelegraphUK:
...The 29-year-old made his address  standing at a huge wooden lectern in front of two vases of what appeared to be purple Kimilsungia flowers, a type of orchid named after his grandfather. The more round and squat Kimjongilia flower was not visibly on display...

He vowed that North Korea would "open up a new phase" and make a "radical turnaround" in its economy in 2013, perhaps signalling that he is considering some of the economic reforms that have transformed North Korea's neighbours.

"Let us bring about a radical turn in the building of an economic giant with the same spirit and mettle as were displayed in conquering space," he said....

Google in hot "Persian Gulf" water

Truth be told, the Iranians are absolutely right about the "Persian Gulf" .. not only the sea there but many of the Arab countries which rightfully belong to Iran ... formerly known as Persia.  What Google is doing is IMO, stealth change in geography because it is now "fashionable" to suck up to the Arabs and their money and isolate Iran. Sheesssh !!

  Iran has criticized Google    for leaving the body of water separating it from the Arabian Peninsula nameless on its online map service, saying it could hurt the Internet giant's credibility.

"Google fabricating lies will not have any outcome but for its users to lose trust in the data the company provides," Iran’s deputy minister of culture, Bahman Dorri, told the country’s IRNA news agency.

"The efforts of the (global) arrogance and its Arab allies to remove the name of the Persian Gulf will result in its name becoming more durable," he added.

While historical documents show that the waterway has always been referred to as the 'Persian Gulf', certain Arab states have recently mounted efforts to remove 'Persian' from the name of the waterway, instead choosing to call it the ‘Arabian Gulf’....

Google degenerates into an even bigger Peeping Tom

If one day you don't see my blog, it will be because I will let it die just like I pulled the sunset on my Facebook account.  Google stock will be sweeping the floor before long .... nobody likes a Peeping Tom unless you are an exhibitionist.

Google said Tuesday it will follow the activities of users across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.

The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes.

The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones....