I normally write about stocks, the markets and economics. But today I’m going to write about something far more important, because if we start to lose it, there will be no markets or stocks to write about.

Does that sound extreme? Maybe, but hear me out. It always starts somewhere.

We often talk about the mainstream media, and the inference is that it is old and bumbling and losing its touch. But it’s not. It’s actually growing and surviving. It’s morphing into the world of tech.

Overnight, four tech titans — Apple, Facebook, Youtube (owned by Alphabet/Google) and Spotify — simultaneously banned Alex Jones’ Info Wars news channel. More accurately, Apple moved first, then the dominos quickly fell.

Think what you will of Alex Jones, but this is a gross violation of free speech. Who decides what is and what isn’t right for public consumption? It should be the individual. Not a corporation.

Jones, it seems, went too far with his claims that the Sandy Hook high school shootings were a hoax.

Let me tell you though, the people who made the decision used that as an excuse. Jones’ biggest crime is his strong support of Trump and his hatred of the ‘elite’, their ties to the Democratic Party, and the ‘deep state’.

These are some pretty big enemies to be having a go at.

 

The global politics of the elite

Now, do you think big tech companies are a part of the ‘elite’, trying to control the narrative of global politics and economic growth? Let’s see…

One way to do this is to see who sits on the board of these companies. The board makes strategic decisions and ensures the company is run ‘properly’. Properly usually means maximising shareholder returns. But in the case of these global behemoths, the consideration is to maximise returns over the long term.

That means eliminating your enemies. And make no mistake, Jones is an enemy of the establishment.

So, who is on Apple’s board (apart from Tim Cook, CEO)? It’s an interesting bunch:

  • Arthur D. Levinson,CEO of Genentech (owned by Roche AG, big pharma)
  • James A. Bell,Former CFO and President of The Boeing Company (doesn’t get much more establishment than Boeing)
  • Albert A. Gore Jr.Former Democratic Vice President of the United States (what the?)
  • Robert A. Iger,Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company (THE mainstream media…ABC News )
  • Andrea Jung,President and CEO of Grameen America (seems decidedly non-establishment)
  • Ronald D. Sugar,Former Chairman and CEO of The Northrop Grumman Corporation (the military-industrial complex)
  • Susan L. Wagner,Co-founder and Director of BlackRock (largest asset manager in the world…would have a BIG investment in Apple)

So there you go kids, the techy, edgy, Apple Inc is as establishment as they come. So is Google, Facebook and Twitter. They’re too important not to be. Check out this from The Guardian, who in June wrote about the Bilderberg 2018 meeting in Turin:

This year’s Bilderberg conference has begun in Turin, and as well as billionaires and bank bossesthe attendeesinclude four prime ministers, two deputy prime ministers, the Nato secretary general, the German defence minister, the king of the Netherlands and the indefatigable 95-year-old Henry Kissinger.

Like Kissinger, Bilderberg shows no signs of slowing down or complacency.Its recent flirtationwith artificial intelligence and Silicon Valley seems to have blossomed into a full-blown affair. This year a Twitter board member, Patrick Pichette, has got the nod, and returning for the second time is Divesh Makan, who has links to Mark Zuckerberg and whose clients include Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Bilderberg veteran.

With AI high onthe agenda,Demis Hassabis, who runs Google’s London-based DeepMind project, has also been invited back. He will be joined by his fellow AI luminary Hartmut Neven, the head of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence lab.

If you’re unaware, the Bilderberg Group is a secretive meeting of the global elites. It’s a club, and no one else is invited to join, or even hear about what goes on. I’m sure it’s all for the good of humanity, and I’m just engaging in stupid conspiracy theories to suggest otherwise.

The thing is ‘clubs’ create a team mentality. And teams go up against other teams. So who are the elites up against? Us? The truth? [openx slug=inpost]

 

So much for freedom of speech

It is a strange old world. And, like it or not, it needs voices like Alex Jones. Diversity of opinion is crucial to a healthy society. But the elites clearly don’t think so.

One of the charges against Jones is that he ‘believes in conspiracy theories’. It’s a classic mainstream media charge. It makes the reader believe that anything other than mainstream media news is a lie. Which should put you on guard immediately.

Let me leave you with a quote from William Casey, CIA Director, from a staff meeting in 1981.

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false”

Did he really say this, or is it just another conspiracy ‘nut’ concoction?

This is the answer from Quora:

I am the source for this quote, which was indeed said by CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration.

The meeting was in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, not far from the Cabinet Room. I was present at the meeting as Assistant to the chief domestic policy adviser to the President. Casey first told Reagan that he had been astonished to discover that over80 percent of the ‘intelligence’ that the analysis side of the CIA produced was based on open public sources like newspapers and magazines.

As he did to all the other secretaries of their departments and agencies, Reagan asked what he saw as his goal as director for the CIA, to whichhe replied with this quote, which I recorded in my notes of the meetingas he said it. Shortly thereafter I told Senior White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who was a close friend and colleague, who in turn made it public.

— Barbara Honegger

There you go. Whose side are they on?

Until next week,

Greg Canavan,