Glenn discussed the continuing violence spreading throughout the Middle East. While stories are still developing, here are some of the news stories Glenn will be touching on:
1. Clashes erupt as Mexican president visits city
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110216/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_oaxaca_protests
2. More Protests Expected At State Capitol
http://www.channel3000.com/news/26886617/detail.html
3. Bahrain, Yemen, Libya Face Protests as Region's Unrest Spreads
4. 'Brothers' in Egypt Present Two Faces
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629004576135882819143872.html
Glenn also talked about Google and his concerns about the tech company which is so integrated into the fabric of our lives. Why the concern? Some of Glenn's reasons are outlined below:
ERIC SCHMIDT ON GOOGLE – FROM WSJ INTERVIEW 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html
§ The day is coming when the Google search box—and the activity known as Googling—no longer will be at the center of our online lives. Then what? "We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Mr. Schmidt acknowledges. "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type."
§ "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he elaborates. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."
§ Let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are." Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are. Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've been reading about took place on the next block.
§ Says Mr. Schmidt, a generation of powerful handheld devices is just around the corner that will be adept at surprising you with information that you didn't know you wanted to know. "The thing that makes newspapers so fundamentally fascinating—that serendipity—can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically," Mr. Schmidt says.
§ …Google takes a similarly generous view of its own motives on the politically vexed issue of privacy. Mr. Schmidt says regulation is unnecessary because Google faces such strong incentives to treat its users right, since they will walk away the minute Google does anything with their personal information they find "creepy."
§ Really? Some might be skeptical that a user with, say, a thousand photos on Picasa would find it so easy to walk away. Or a guy with 10 years of emails on Gmail. Or a small business owner who has come to rely on Google Docs as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Isn't stickiness—even slightly extortionate stickiness—what these Google services aim for?
§ Mr. Schmidt is surely right, though, that the questions go far beyond Google. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says. He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites. "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society," he adds. "I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things," he says.
Schmidt on Soros
§ CEO ERIC SHMIDT “MY VIEW OF SOROS IS THAT HE IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE WORLD TODAY IN TERMS OF IMPACTS HE’S HAD”
§ GOOGLE/SOROS HAVE $17 MILLION INTO A VENTURE WITH OMIDYAR NETWORK TO FUND ENTERPRISES IN INDIA
§ (1). On Aug. 9, 2006, Schmidt held an interview with George Soros to discuss Soros’s new book. During the interview, they referenced past contacts they had had, demonstrating a long-time relationship between them
§ (2). In a March 29, 2010 press release from the Open Society Institute, Soros encouraged Google to choose Baltimore as the city to launch their high speed internet project, “for the same reasons that I selected Baltimore for my philanthropic investment,” Soros said
§ (3). Soros’s request shows that he identifies Google as one with his same left-wing ideals.
2. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6150320548187842685#
3. http://www.soros.org/initiatives/baltimore/news/google-fiber-20100329
VIDEO
APPROX 8:28-10:27 mins; In this segment Soros talks about short-circuiting the American system and creating open societies in the world.
§ Get rid of Bush… We could short circuit bubble of American supremacy… a false idea but nevertheless becomes part of reality….
MoveOn.org – According to Newsbusters 2006, “Google has become the single largest private underwriter of MoveOn.org”. DNC sources say, MoveOn has received more than $1 million from Google and its lobbyists in DC to create grassroots support for the Internet regulation legislation.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/node/5372#ixzz1Dlkn9OHe
a. Google also gave money to the Trickle Up Program which receives funding from Tides and Open Society.
i. http://www.trickleup.org/media/publications/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=3235
ii. http://www.trickleup.org/about/History.cfm
1. “The trickle up program continues to be a critical vehicle for poor people’s social and financial empowerment.”
b. They’ve donated almost half a million to Jimmy Carters “Carter Center”
GOOGLE CONTRACTS
§ NASA & GOOGLE DEAL: NASA houses fleet of jets/helicopter to ferry Google executives, planes are supplied with Department of Defense jet fuel…deal was struck in name of “scientific research.”
§ FCC & GOOGLE: FCC began using Google Analytics to monitor number of visitors to its website, even though one analyst said Google’s privacy provisions are “rather weak.” … visitors to the website are never informed of their tracking unless they happen to first check the agency’s privacy policy.
§ DOI & GOOGLE: Google recently sued the Department of the Interior for refusing to consider its product for a $50 million bidding contract.
§ Pentagon Spending: In September 2010, Google landed its biggest Pentagon contract, inking a $27 million deal with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) even after media reports raised questions of favoritism… with this deal, Google landed the largest government contract ever a $26.7 million dollar renewable sole-source contract for Google Earth spatial imaging software with with the secretive Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). With that decision, Google multiplied nine fold the total of $3.02 million in direct purchase orders that it has received from 25 federal government agencies since is founding 1998.
§ High level support from Obama admin:... Google outmaneuvered rivals to secure federal government certification for its Apps for Government software. That certification helped the company win a competitive $6.5 million contract in December 2010 to provide email for 15,000 employees of the General Services Administration. Complaints arose that Google received preferential treatment