Ending Prosperity and Liberty For All but the World Elites

 We already seem to be in a death spiral 

Ending Prosperity and Liberty For All 

but the World Elites

This morning, yet another story on the devastating destruction of Venezuela crossed my desk.  People are roaming the streets, rummaging through trash cans and killing domestic cats and dogs for food.  There is no food in markets in Venezuela.  Most hospitals have been shut down.  In this oil rich country, the refineries are barely functional and there is little-to-no gasoline.  Venezuela now has very limited electrical power.  Those who are able have, already, left the country.  Although Venezuela had its political problems for many years—on a Caribbean cruise in the 1980s the cruise ship on which my husband and I were traveling couldn’t visit Caracas due to Leftist political turmoil raging in the city—its deconstruction and reconstruction as a 4th world country (one which has out of necessity reverted back to the hunter-gatherer modality) hadn’t yet occurred.  Venezuela was back on its feet for some time before it’s utter demise was to begin, in 1999, under the brutal Marxist Hugo Chavez regime.

Socialism, Nazism, Communism, Fascism, all other “totalitarian-isms” and Islam are merely criminal enterprises operating under some manufactured ideology that gut countries and their people for the would-be masters of their lives.  Once installed in higher office, these “masters” tell the people what they may and may not do, what they may and may not eat, how they must dress, what they must believe, what they may and may not say and regulate all areas of their lives to the liking of their rulers.  This is what we began in the USA in 2008 when Barack Hussein Obama was “elected’ to the presidency of the United States.

Before Chavez, there was still hope that Venezuela—once the richest economy in Latin America—would survive and become prosperous for the people again.  However, when Leftists of any and all stripes take over an area, their policy is scorched earth.  The people’s prosperity and liberties end and the Leftists steal their land, other properties, their freedom, jobs and, ultimately, their lives.  These parasites destroy each and everything they touch and take everything from the people of the country and leave them with barren land and a dismantled dysfunctional country.  That is what we now have in Venezuela.  This is what Obama and his ObamaGov (which includes many Leftists who have infested the Republican Party) have planned for the USA and it has been on the World’s Luciferian Left agenda for a very long time.  As I write this, the Luciferian Left continues on its way towards full implementation of its programs designed to destroy us.

In the USA, the government (aka ObamaGov) is now openly involved in huge land grabs.  With the government’s mercenary group the “Bureau of Land Management” (in Nevada it works almost exclusively for Democrat Senator Harry Reid) regularly steals land from its rightful owners, with the most publicized of his attempted grab being the Bundy Ranch.  The US government owns well over 40% of the land in at least 9 US States and under Obama the BLM has become violent against the rightful and legal owners of land who refuse to sell or relinquish their land to the ObamaGov.  Many are now in prison for refusing to do so.  Others have been killed by the BLM’s command notably including LaVoy Finicum.  The killing by Obama’s FBI Agents is on video….see below.  The 2 vehicles were legally on their way to a meeting with a Sheriff.  The Feds did not want them at that meeting.  They were illegally stopped by the Feds who believe their word is law even if illegal and there is no posed threat…the threat identified by the Feds was the sharing information with other law enforcement and those who had invited them to speak.  They were arrested and one of their members murdered because they were exercising their Constitutional right of free speech and were not “shouting fire in a movie theater.”  In fact, the BLM unconstitutional grabs of US citizens private lands are now so regular and out in the open that even one of its employees is shown on video (see below) bragging about how she and the BLM ‘steal’ land from its rightful owners on a regular basis.  So did Hugo Chavez, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao etc.  This is what the criminals do and, make no mistake, Obama & Co are patent criminals of the highest order.  Obama thuggery for the “elites,” along with his growing hordes in the leadership of both major US political parties, is growing rapidly.  As I’ve written multiple times over the years, today almost all who run for political office want desperately to be corrupted by vast wealth and power.  The people they’re supposed to be serving mean little to nothing to them.  And once one’s connection to humanity is lost…all manner of evil is possible, probable and practiced.  It’s happening now…in our country on a daily basis.

At this juncture, I truly don’t know if the USA has any more chances.  We already seem to be in a death spiral.  With lies upon lies coming from our government (just as in the old USSR and Nazi Germany), False Flags abounding and all manner of non-Constitutional actions from “our” federal government we are already living in a nation run by criminals…criminals who do not effect any salient work product but, want to steal ours and all we have.

Many have been sitting on the wall for years and shouting warnings about that which is now happening.  Few listened.  So, here we are.  May God help us as either the final dark end of the country comes in November with a “let’s keep things the way they are no matter how evil and horrible” or “let’s try something new that will likely work to end—at least—much of the corruption.”  God willing it’s still our choice for a few more months.  Please choose wisely.  This time, it really does mean you life and the lives of your loved ones.

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.”—Daniel 7:25

Sen. Harry Reid Behind BLM Land Grab of Bundy Ranch

Government employee brags about stealing land

US government owns over 40% of the land in at least 9 US States

Eyewitness to LaVoy Finicum’s Killing: All Gun Shots were fired by Feds as He had His Hands in the Air, Snipers in Trees – It was an Ambush

Concentration Camps are Here! (Bundy story)

Video shows two camera angles of LaVoy Finicum shooting

I Remember America: Safe, Sane, Secure, Stable!

If you live in America, be an American (why else did you come here), or go back where you came from!

I Remember America: Safe, Sane, Secure, Stable!

The America I remember is no more; an America of parades to honor our military, not gay rights parades; an America of fireworks on the Fourth of July, not flesh-ripping explosions at almost any time. My nation has been destroyed by a consortium of deviates, Democrats, Socialists, Marxists, spineless Republicans, socialist academics, low-life entertainers, ad nauseam.

I remember an America where teachers were obeyed, respected, and even feared. We knew that if we received a paddling at school, we would get one at home. That was before the graduates of Columbia took control of our educational system. My three most respected and loved teachers were the ones who were the most demanding.

I remember when the Bible was read and prayers said each morning in the public schools. Today, the schools are nut factories often filled with uneducated, unprincipled, and uncaring teachers and rebellious, resentful, and raucous students. Some kids go on to college but only 55% receive a degree within six years and often that degree is useless. One reason for the 45% dropout rate is that most college freshmen read on a seventh grade level!

I remember an America when every high school graduate had basic knowledge about America, the world, and their obligations to work hard to make a good life. I remember when every student in elementary school learned basic math and historical events; about dangling participles and split infinitives; facts about government; memorized the Preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Bill of Rights, the Wreck of the Hesperus, Inchcape Rock; and was familiar with Poe, Hawthorne, Coolidge, Irving, etc. And a weekly book report, written and read, was the norm.

I remember an America when men stood when a woman entered the room; when you tipped your hat to a lady; when you removed your hat when entering a building and would not even think of eating while wearing a hat; and when a gentleman always asked a lady, “Do you mind if I smoke?” Moreover, if a crude man carelessly cursed in a woman’s presence, he would often blush and ask to be forgiven. How quaint. And, even in West Virginia, smoking and cursing women were as scarce as white dinosaurs in Manhattan.

I remember an America when we walked quietly and respectfully by a home with a gold star hanging in the window. We knew that some father, brother, or son had been slaughtered on faraway battlefields with strange names such as Iwo Jima, Corregidor, Coral Sea, Battle of the Bulge, Anzio, Heartbreak Ridge, Inchon, Pusan, and many others.

I remember an America when we never locked our doors day or night and the iceman had access to our back porch icebox for ice deliveries.

I remember an America when neighbors bossed anyone’s kid around and even provided a swat on the rear when needed. This was before the fanatics at Child Protection Agency, trying to do good, took control and destroyed a vast number of families with the help of our culture.

I remember an America when families could watch any television show together and never be embarrassed. The most risqué show was when Milton Berle, dressed as a woman, hit other stars with his purse.

I remember an America when men–even myself–would shake hands on a $50,000 business deal and both kept their word–without a written contract.

I remember when there were boys and girls, men and women and if anyone had suggested the possibility of same-sex “marriage,” he would have been certified insane.

I remember an America when if a girl got pregnant (a very seldom occurrence) she was a shame to her family (but was not rejected) and visited grandma for a few months. The baby was often reared as a sibling or cousin or was adopted by a deserving family.

I remember an America when every life was sacred and it was a major shame, scandal, and sin if a woman had her own child butchered within her womb. And a crime.

I remember an America when a politician (who disgraced himself, his family, and his party) quickly apologized, resigned, and took the next plane or train to his backwater town to live in obscurity until his death.

I remember an America when you could discuss serious issues with people who believed the opposite yet still remain friends.

I remember an America when parents were loved, respected, if not feared and the thought of talking back was never a possibility. I remember when your family name was almost sacred and the thought of bringing disgrace to it was anathema.

No, my America was not perfect but it was pleasant, peaceful, and proper and my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will only see some glimpse of it from their own family but not from the nation as a whole. So, I believe we should retain as much of old America as possible and we can do that without harming or offending other cultures or races.

However, old America is being challenged, changed, even crushed by Islamic and Hispanic immigration, legal and illegal. It’s time to demand that every immigrant swear an oath of allegiance to America then sing “America, the Beautiful” while they whistle “It’s a Grand Old Flag”—at the same time—with a mouthful of saltine crackers! All failures should be dropped off at the Mexican or Arabian Desert!

Well, maybe not that extreme but everyone should get the message: If you live in America, be an American (why else did you come here), or go back where you came from!

Boys’ new book, Muslim Invasion: The Fuse in Burning! was published this week by Barbwire Books.

 Dr. Don Boys 


Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber  AMEN 

How Big Pharma Creates Diseases for Its Medications

How Big Pharma Creates Diseases for Its Medications

When pharmaceutical companies create a new drug, they are always looking for compounds that treat specific profitable disorders, especially if they have the potential for blockbuster status. Patent life is 20 years after the drug has been identified as viable in clinical trials – this means that no one else can make or sell the medication during that time.1

For this reason, pharmaceutical companies prep the marketplace for years prior for a successful launch with maximum impact and profit.

By the time a drug launches, doctors are ready to write prescriptions for that drug, and patients are primed to ask their doctors for it. Because it’s a name brand drug, the price is high, and pharma will want to keep that price point by protecting and extending their patent exclusivity as long as possible.

Pharma protects their patents in a number of ways. One option is to negotiate with generic drug manufacturers, asking them not to release their own versions for a set amount of time and money. Another way is to extend a patent by finding a new indication for it, thereby buying it another lifecycle as a brand name drug that sells at full premium price. In order to find this new indication, pharmaceutical companies have to get creative.

Pharma has found it profitable to create new illnesses to treat with successful existing drugs. An example of this phenomenon is Eli Lilly’s selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Prozac. Prozac was originally launched and achieved blockbuster status with an indication for depression. The target market was doctors who specialized in central nervous system (CNS) disorders, Family Practitioners, and on the patient side, anyone who suffered from depression. As the first SSRI on the market, Prozac was hugely successful and widely prescribed for mild, moderate, and severe depression. In the USA, annual sales were $350 million in the first year alone and peaked at $2.6 billion a year.2

Doctors were also encouraged by Lilly’s pharmaceutical sales reps to prescribe Prozac for other “off label” uses. Off label uses are any symptoms that the drug is not indicated for and that haven’t been tested in clinical trials. Examples of off label use of an anti-depressant would be obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. It is interesting that prior to Prozac, there was no such “disease” as PMDD. Prozac was also recommended to be prescribed for shyness, fear of public speaking, and other non-medical conditions. And, patients were encouraged to ask for Prozac for these types of mild social phobias, making the drug very successful and profitable.


Because Prozac impedes sexual function, it is also recommended for premature ejaculation. Now that Prozac (fluoxetine) has gone generic, it is also prescribed off label for bulimia, post-partum depression, premenstrual syndrome, fibromyalgia, body dysmorphic disorder, pathological laughter or crying, narcolepsy, agoraphobia, trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder), seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and many other ills that plague the “worried well.”

“NOTHING IS AS LUCRATIVE AS A PRODUCT THAT SOMEONE IS DESPERATELY DEPENDENT ON. AND, NOTHING IS BETTER THAN GETTING THOSE ON BOARD WHO AREN’T EVEN ILL.” 

– JOHN VIRAPEN, IN HIS WHISTLEBLOWER BOOK, “SIDE EFFECTS: DEATH CONFESSIONS OF A PHARMA INSIDER” 

Merck developed a drug treatment for benign prostatic hyperplasia (enlarged prostate, commonly referred to as BPH) named Proscar. Interestingly, Proscar was found to grow hair, and was launched as a brand new drug called Propecia for male pattern baldness which was now being positioned as a treatable “disease.” In reality, male pattern baldness is not a disease, it’s a common genetic condition. Gradual hair loss is a normal part of the aging process for many men. But, if repositioned as a disease that can be cured, it presents a huge market to be exploited for Merck.
Unfortunately, growing hair with the use of medication carries risks. In clinical trials, Propecia was found to cause sexual side effects such as decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, and ejaculation disorder. The drug launched anyway to a prepared eager-to-grow-hair target market. What the manufacturer failed to disclose in the prescribing information (PI) was that those adverse events often lingered even after patients discontinued use of the drug. At least 700 lawsuits are pending in New York State with more to come in New Jersey. The issue is that Merck knew that the adverse events would persist after patients ceased use of the drug, and they hid that information from the public.3

Pharmacia (now Pfizer) created a compound that would later be marketed as Genotropin. This drug is a human growth hormone that is targeted at “slow growing” children.4 The brand team primed the marketplace for the drug by appealing to parents of small children, essentially insinuating that being short was, in fact, a disease. Stats were gathered and a case was built that taller adults have more confidence, enjoy more advantages like promotions and raises, and generally earn more money than their shorter coworkers. What parent would want their child to miss out on those advantages? What the manufacturer failed to disclose is that there are serious side effects that come along with the use of growth hormone in a child’s developing body.

The off-label use of Genotropin was supposed to be the real cash cow. The goal of the Product Managers was to tap into the beauty market by promoting human growth hormone as an anti-aging breakthrough, attempting to relabel the entire process of aging as a disease process in need of pharmaceutical treatment. Researchers had hopes that clinical trials would demonstrate the compound stimulated the growth of muscle mass and decreased fat. Those trials never bore fruit, and Pfizer was unable to push that off label use. But it doesn’t mind promoting Genotropin to orthopedists to inject into the joints of injured athletes who are looking to recover quickly from sports injuries. Using human growth hormone may cause such side effects as pain in joints and muscles, arm and leg swelling, carpal tunnel syndrome, and gynecomastia in men (breast enlargement), and may also lead to heart disease and diabetes.5 These side effects were seen in older people rather than younger, but isn’t it older people who are more likely to take the bait of aging as a disease?

The trouble with prescribing any drug for off label use to treat a newly created disease, such as aging, is the potential for adverse events and even death. This is especially risky if that drug is prescribed by a General Practitioner who isn’t monitoring the patient for a specific disease the way a specialist would. Creating pseudo-diseases to increase profits isn’t about patient health. It’s about pharma wealth.

SOURCES

1 http://www.drugsdb.com/blog/how-long-is-a-drug-patent-good-for.html

2 http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/08/13/308077/index.htm

3 https://www.drugwatch.com/propecia/

4 http://www.genotropin.com/

5 http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/healthy-aging/in-depth/growth-hormone/art-20045735

This Orwellian Technology Automates Censorship & Is Even Worse Than It Sounds

As people around the world struggle to come to terms with the recent years’ rise in terrorist attacks — and on the heels of a mass shooting in Orlando that left 49 people dead — many are looking to social media platforms to up their game in the battle against online radicalization. Now, a computer scientist claims to have developed an algorithm that can permanently remove extremist content from the Web — before it has a chance to go viral.

“It is no longer a matter of not having the technological ability to fight online extremism,” Dr. Hany Farid, of Dartmouth, told International Business Times, “it is a matter of the industry and private sector partners having the will to take action.”

The technology, which Farid describes as “robust hashing,” is based on earlier software the scientist developed called PhotoDNA, which tracks and removes images of child pornography. The new algorithm would function similarly — identifying extremist images and videos on the Internet by searching for that contents’ unique digital markers, or “hashes.”

“Every image, every video, every audio, has a distinct signature that we can extract from it. It’s a lot like human DNA,” Dr. Farid said on MSNBC. “So that when an image comes in, we have flagged it as child pornography, extremism, violence, calls to violence. So we extract the signature, and then we simply scan everything that comes in and compare it against that signature, and when we get a hit, that content is not allowed online.”

Funded by Microsoft and in collaboration with the nonprofit think tank Counter Extremism Project, Farid is now calling on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to adopt his technology, which he claims will be ready to roll out in a matter of months.

For its part, the United States government — which has long called upon tech companies to aid authorities in combating the radicalization of ordinary citizens — is fully on board with Farid’s approach.

“We welcome the launch of initiatives…that enable companies to address terrorist activity on their platforms and better respond to the threat posed by terrorists’ activities online,” Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s top counterterrorism expert, was reported as saying. “The innovative private sector that created so many technologies our society enjoys today can also help create tools to limit terrorists from abusing these technologies in ways their creators never intended.”

But many, including Dr. Farid himself, have voiced concern about the seemingly arbitrary nature in which such an algorithm tracks content, since there appears to be nothing standing in the way of programmers using the technology to target things like political speech that might happen to be unfavorable to the establishment.

Foreign Policy magazine, for instance, notes that “if the project ever hopes to get off the ground it will have to overcome serious concern that using algorithms to police speech doesn’t end up as Orwellian as it sounds.”

Continuing:

“If defining what constitutes a terrorist is a famously tricky problem, nailing down what counts as terrorist rhetoric is doubly hard. Farid himself acknowledges that his algorithm could be turned toward nefarious ends. ‘You could also envision repressive regimes using this to stifle speech,’ he said.”

Dr. Farid echoed this sentiment while talking with the Washington Post, admitting that his technology is a “double-edged sword.”

“Those are where the hard questions are going to be asked,” he said. “What constitutes and does not constitute hate speech and calls to violence? And what is dangerous, and what is simply dissent?”
Matthew Prince, chief executive of content distribution at CloudFlare, spoke to The Guardian about the fact that, so far, none of social media companies have agreed to implement Farid’s algorithm — and are holding all their discussions about the prospect away from the public eye.

“There’s no upside in these companies talking about it,” he told the publication. “Why would they brag about censorship?”

Others have questioned the underlying concept behind the software. Nicholas Glavin, senior research associate at U.S. Naval War College, told Vocativ:

THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY IS FAR FROM THE SILVER BULLET THAT WILL TACKLE EXTREMISM ONLINE. FOCUSING ON THE SUPPLY SIDE OF EXTREMIST CONTENT FAILS TO ADDRESS THE PUSH AND PULL FACTORS THAT DRIVE INDIVIDUALS TO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Doubts about the software’s potential efficacy aside, the primary question at the moment is in regard to who gets to determine what qualifies as extremist content. Currently, that responsibility would fall to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), the think tank Dr. Farid is collaborating with — and of which the scientist is a senior advisor.

The CEP is proposing a new center called the National Office for Reporting Extremism (NORex), which would house the database of flagged content the algorithm would draw from.

As such, and as Defense One writes: “CEP would play an important role in deciding whether or not tagged content was actually extremist in nature, or simply controversial.”

With such discretionary power centralized in one body, prudence demands a closer look at who’s holding that organization’s reins.

And the short answer, as perhaps should come as no surprise, is government.

A simple scan over the CEP “Leadership” page — what The Atlantic refers to as a “star-studded roster” — would no doubt cause some who stay abreast of geopolitical affairs to step back and consider.

The first advisory board member listed is former Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, whose run in Congress lasted nearly a quarter-century. When his service ended in 2013, he was Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee.
Another CEP advisor is Dennis Ross, counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former director at the National Security Council. Prior to the Institute, Ross served two years as special assistant to President Barack Obama and a year as special advisor to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Elliot Abrams, former deputy assistant and deputy national security advisor to President George W. Bush, is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Years before, Abrams was an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration.

Other advisory members include former ambassadors, current intelligence professionals, and a Nobel Laureate.

The list goes on.

Even the CEP president, Frances Townsend — who now works as an attorney in the private sector — spent 13 years in the Justice Department under the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

So for those who would turn to government institutions to show us the way with regard to such complicated issues as monitoring speech, having such potentially sweeping censorship power in the hands of former government officials is probably cause to rejoice.

For others, however, who view those same institutions as an impediment to truly free and open discussion of ideas — and who can envision the dark place the type of technology being proposed by Dr. Farid and the CEP could lead, regarding First Amendment rights — what’s unfolding now is considerable cause for alarm indeed.

This article (This Orwellian Technology Automates Censorship & Is Even Worse Than It Sounds) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to James Holbrooks andUndergroundReporter.org. If you spot a typo, please email the error and the name of the article toundergroundreporter2016@gmail.com.

Spiritual Loneliness: What To Do When No One Understands You

Spiritual Loneliness: What To Do When No One Understands You

For those who are spiritually-minded, it’s not uncommon to feel a little disconnected from other people at times.  The experience of loneliness is almost a natural byproduct of spiritual awakening.  Though we might be connected to our inner guidance system, we might also feel a little displaced in modern civilization where materialism, consumerism and negativity often reign supreme.  If you are going through an awakening process, or if you already have, then you will certainly know what it feels like to be rejected by the herd.

So how do we maintain a feeling of unity with everyone, while also feeling like we are emotionally separated from everyone?

Here are some helpful ways to cope with spiritual loneliness:

1) Reality itself is just a play in consciousness.  It’s all a dream.

You are dreaming right now.  You aren’t dreaming in the sense that your body is asleep, but you are dreaming in the sense that when you die you will wake up in a new dimension.  You will realize that your life and your journey was all one big play that was setup so that you could evolve as a soul.  Zooming out and gaining perspective like this really helps with dealing with loneliness, because it allows to remember that our life is a manifestation of our consciousness and a projection of our creativity.

Don’t take things too seriously! Learn from the dream, listen to the dream, and explore the dream.  But don’t let the contents of the dream hold you up.

2) Operate from love rather than fear

Don’t let thoughts like “I’m always going to be alone”, or “I’ll never find a good group of friends”, or “I’m never going to have someone I can relate to” dominate your consciousness.  The problem of using fear as a motivator in life is that making decisions out of fear actually pushes the things that we want away from us.   For example, if we are afraid of being lonely, we actually attract more loneliness into our lives.  Will anyone actually be energetically attracted to an energy field of fear and self-pity?


Operate from a space of self-certainty and self-love, and you can’t help but attract that into your life.  When you allow fear to be your dominant feeling, you are telling the universe you aren’t ready to step into greatness yet.

3) Go with the flow

Life in modern society can be very frantic.  There is no need to rush, and no need to try to win the rat race. Remember, there’s nowhere you need to be, nothing you need to do and no one you need to impress.  Sometimes, we cause ourselves anxiety by holding ourselves up to expectations society puts forward for us.  You don’t need a group of 10 friends that you get together with each weekend.  You don’t need a Twilight relationship.  Holding expectations of achieving a cookie-cutter life only breeds stress and confusion. Learning to completely let go and relax will be one of the best things you can do to creating a happy life for yourself.

Follow your intuition and do the things that come naturally to you.  Life is about the journey.  Work with the universe, follow your heart, and be open to possibilities.

4) Seek others out

Always remember, there are many spiritually-minded people out there.  Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t found any yet within your immediate surroundings.  Take action towards the lifestyle you want, and meet the universe halfway so that it can create synchronicities for you.  Take a yoga class.  Take a class at a local metaphysical shop.  Hangout at a progressive cafe.  Join a spiritual community online.  Keep all your doors open.

It’s not uncommon to feel alone or excluded in our society, especially if you have alternative views and beliefs.  Don’t feel bad for yourself.  Self-pity is useless.  Feel proud that you have the courage to be yourself in a world where individuality is suppressed.  Feel excited that as long as you are in integrity, you will only have incredible relationships from here on out.  You are loved, and there are millions of others who feel the same way you do.

I feel “spiritually lonely” too sometimes.  But the important thing to do when you feel lonely is change your perspective, operate from love, be proud of yourself for being true to who you are, and trust that the universe will provide you with the support system you need if you are willing to take a step outside your comfort zone to make those connections happen.

How did Google Become the Internet’s Censor and Master Manipulator?

Google blacklists 10,000 sites a day for various reasons, mainly for spam.20 For them this includes sharing or modifying blog posts like the one below.  Thousands of blogs and alternative news sites, including this one (thefreeonline) are permanently ‘deranked’ for sharing, so they only appear in Google Search if you search the exact title or URL. Many bloggers see their traffic vanish and close down.

The New Censorship – How did Google become the internet’s censor and master manipulator, blocking access to millions of websites?

Google, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor.

The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet.

Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed (good on em!), a practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block.

 Blacklist Check – Finds and Checks your IP Address?  free service    Check to see if an IP address is blacklisted with one of nearly seventy DNS based blacklists(DNSBL) in our database which identify sources of spam.

When Google’s employees or algorithms decide to block our access to information about a news item, political candidate or business, opinions and votes can shift, reputations can be ruined and businesses can crash and burn.

Because online censorship is entirely unregulated at the moment, victims have little or no recourse when they have been harmed. Eventually, authorities will almost certainly have to step in, just as they did when credit bureaus were regulated in 1970.The alternative would be to allow a large corporation to wield an especially destructive kind of power that should be exercised with great restraint and should belong only to the public: the power to shame or exclude.

If Google were just another mom-and-pop shop with a sign saying “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” that would be one thing. But as the golden gateway to all knowledge, Google has rapidly become an essential in people’s lives – nearly as essential as air or water. We don’t let public utilities make arbitrary and secretive decisions about denying people services; we shouldn’t let Google do so either.

Let’s start with the most trivial blacklist and work our way up. I’ll save the biggest and baddest – one the public knows virtually nothing about but that gives Google an almost obscene amount of power over our economic well-being – until last.

1. The autocomplete blacklist.

This is a list of words and phrases that are excluded from the autocomplete feature in Google’s search bar. The search bar instantly suggests multiple search options when you type words such as “democracy” or “watermelon,” but it freezes when you type profanities, and, at times, it has frozen when people typed words like “torrent,” “bisexual” and “penis.” At this writing, it’s freezing when I type “clitoris.” The autocomplete blacklist can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. As recently reported, at the moment autocomplete shows you “Ted” (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type “lying,” but it will not show you “Hillary” when you type “crooked” – not even, on my computer, anyway, when you type “crooked hill.” (The nicknames for Clinton and Cruz coined by Donald Trump, of course.) If you add the “a,” so you’ve got “crooked hilla,” you get the very odd suggestion “crooked Hillary Bernie.” When you type “crooked” on Bing, “crooked Hillary” pops up instantly. Google’s list of forbidden terms varies by region and individual, so “clitoris” might work for you. (Can you resist checking?)

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2. The Google Maps blacklist.

This list is a little more creepy, and if you are concerned about your privacy, it might be a good list to be on. The cameras of Google Earth and Google Maps have photographed your home for all to see. If you don’t like that, “just move,” Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt said. Google also maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images. Some are probably military installations, some the residences of wealthy people, and some – well, who knows? Martian pre-invasion enclaves? Google doesn’t say.

3. The YouTube blacklist.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, allows users to flag inappropriate videos, at which point Google censors weigh in and sometimes remove them, but not, according to a recent report by Gizmodo, with any great consistency – except perhaps when it comes to politics. Consistent with the company’s strong and open supportfor liberal political candidates, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. In December 2015, singer Joyce Bartholomew sued YouTube for removing her openly pro-life music video, but I can find no instances of pro-choice music being removed. YouTube also sometimes acquiesces to the censorship demands of foreign governments. Most recently, in return for overturning a three-year ban on YouTube in Pakistan, it agreed to allow Pakistan’s government to determine which videos it can and cannot post.

4. The Google account blacklist.

A couple of years ago, Google consolidated a number of its products – Gmail, Google Docs, Google+, YouTube, Google Wallet and others – so you can access all of them through your one Google account. If you somehow violate Google’s vague and intimidating terms of service agreement, you will join the ever-growing list of people who are shut out of their accounts, which means you’ll lose access to all of these interconnected products.

Because virtually no one has ever read this lengthy, legalistic agreement, however, people are shocked when they’re shut out, in part because Google reserves the right to “stop providing Services to you … at any time.” And because Google, one of the largest and richest companies in the world, has no customer service department, getting reinstated can be difficult. (Given, however, that all of these services gather personal information about you to sell to advertisers, losing one’s Google account has been judged by some to be a blessing in disguise.)

Demonstrators shout anti-government slogans as one of them carry a placard with a picture of Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan during a protest against internet censorship in Istanbul May 15, 2011. Thousands of people marched in central Istanbul to protest against the government’s plan to filter the internet. REUTERS/Murad Sezer (TURKEY – Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS) TEMPLATE OUT – RTR2MG6M

 5. The Google News blacklist.

If a librarian were caught trashing all the liberal newspapers before people could read them, he or she might get in a heap o’ trouble. What happens when most of the librarians in the world have been replaced by a single company?Google is now the largest news aggregator in the world, tracking tens of thousands of news sources in more than thirty languages and recently adding thousands of small, local news sources to its inventory.
It also selectively bans news sources as it pleases. In 2006, Google was accused of excluding conservative news sources that generated stories critical of Islam, and the company has also been accused of banningindividual columnists and competing companiesfrom its news feed.

In December 2014, facing a new law in Spain that would have charged Google for scraping content from Spanish news sources (which, after all, have to pay to prepare their news),Google suddenly withdrew its news service from Spain, which led to an immediate drop in traffic to Spanish new stories. That drop in traffic is the problem:

When a large aggregator bans you from its service, fewer people find your news stories, which means opinions will shift away from those you support. Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser.

6. The Google AdWords blacklist.

Now things get creepier. More than 70 percent of Google’s $80 billion in annual revenuecomes from its AdWords advertising service, which it implemented in 2000 by infringing on a similar system already patented by Overture Services.

The way it works is simple: Businesses worldwide bid on the right to use certain keywords in short text ads that link to their websites (those text ads are the AdWords); when people click on the links, those businesses pay Google. These ads appear on Google.com and other Google websites and are also interwoven into the content of more than a million non-Google websites – Google’s “Display Network.”

The problem here is that if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn’t meet its moral standards, it bans you from AdWords; these days, with Google’s reach so large, that can quickly put you out of business. In 2011, Google blacklisted an Irish political group that defended sex workers but which did not provide them; after a protest, the company eventually backed down.

In May 2016, Google blacklisted an entire industry – companies providing high-interest “payday” loans. As always, the company billed this dramatic move as an exercise in social responsibility, failing to note that it is a major investor in LendUp.com, which is in the same industry; if Google fails to blacklist LendUp (it’s too early to tell), the industry ban might turn out to have been more of an anticompetitive move than one of conscience.

That kind of hypocrisy has turned up before in AdWords activities. Whereas Google takes a moral stand, for example, in banning ads from companies promising quick weight loss, in 2011, Google forfeited a whopping $500 million to the U.S. Justice Department for having knowingly allowed Canadian drug companies to sell drugs illegally in the U.S. for years through the AdWords system, and several state attorneys general believe that Google hascontinued to engage in similar practices since 2011; investigations are ongoing.

7. The Google AdSense blacklist.

If your website has been approved by AdWords, you are eligible to sign up for Google AdSense, a system in which Google places ads for various products and services on your website.

When people click on those ads, Google pays you. If you are good at driving traffic to your website, you can make millions of dollars a year running AdSense ads – all without having any products or services of your own. Meanwhile, Google makes a net profit by charging the companies behind the ads for bringing them customers; this accounts for about 18 percentof Google’s income.

Here, too, there is scandal: In April 2014, in two posts on PasteBin.com, someone claiming to be a former Google employee working in their AdSense department alleged the department engaged in a regular practice of dumping AdSense customers just before Google was scheduled to pay them.

To this day, no one knows whether the person behind the posts was legit, but one thing is clear: Since that time, real lawsuits filed by real companies have, according to WebProNews, been “piling up” against Google, alleging the companies were unaccountably dumped at the last minute by AdSense just before large payments were due, in some cases payments as high as $500,000.

8. The search engine blacklist.

Google’s ubiquitous search engine has indeed become the gateway to virtually all information, handling 90 percent of search in most countries. It dominates search because its index is so large: Google indexes more than 45 billion web pages; its next-biggest competitor, Microsoft’s Bing, indexes a mere 14 billion, which helps to explain the poor quality of Bing’s search results.

Google’s dominance in search is why businesses large and small live in constant “fear of Google,” as Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, the largest publishing conglomerate in Europe, put it in an open letter to Eric Schmidt in 2014.

According to Dopfner, when Google made one of its frequent adjustments to its search algorithm, one of his company’s subsidiaries dropped dramatically in the search rankings and lost 70 percent of its traffic within a few days. Even worse than the vagaries of the adjustments, however, are the dire consequences that follow when Google employees somehow conclude you have violated their “guidelines”:

You either get banished to the rarely visited Netherlands of search pages beyond the first page (90 percent of all clicks go to links on that first page) or completely removed from the index. In 2011, Google took a “manual action” of a “corrective” nature against retailer J.C. Penney – punishment for Penney’s alleged use of a legal SEO technique called “link building” that many companies employ to try to boost their rankings in Google’s search results. Penney was demoted 60 positions or more in the rankings.

Search ranking manipulations of this sort don’t just ruin businesses; they also affect people’s opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behavior, as my research on the Search Engine Manipulation Effect has demonstrated. Fortunately, definitive information about Google’s punishment programs is likely to turn up over the next year or two thanks to legal challenges the company is facing.

In 2014, a Florida company called e-Ventures Worldwide filed a lawsuit against Google for “completely removing almost every website” associated with the company from its search rankings. When the company’s lawyers tried to get internal documents relevant to Google’s actions though typical litigation discovery procedures, Google refused to comply. In July 2015, a judge ruled that Google had to honor e-Ventures’ discovery requests, and that case is now moving forward.

More significantly, in April 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the attorney general of Mississippi – supported in his efforts by the attorneys general of 40 other states – has the right to proceed with broad discovery requests in his own investigations into Google’s secretive and often arbitrary practices.

This brings me, at last, to the biggest and potentially most dangerous of Google’s blacklists – which Google’s calls its “quarantine” list.

9. The quarantine list.

To get a sense of the scale of this list, I find it helpful to think about an old movie – the classic 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which starred a huge metal robot named Gort. He had laser-weapon eyes, zapped terrified humans into oblivion and had the power to destroy the world.

Klaatu, Gort’s alien master, was trying to deliver an important message to earthlings, but they kept shooting him before he could. Finally, to get the world’s attention, Klaatu demonstrated the enormous power of the alien races he represented by shutting down – at noon New York time – all of the electricity on earth for exactly 30 minutes. The earth stood still.

Substitute “ogle” for “rt,” and you get “Google,” which is every bit as powerful as Gort but with a much better public relations department – so good, in fact, that you are probably unaware that on Jan. 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet. And, as if not to be outdone by a 1951 science fiction move, it did so for 40 minutes.

Impossible, you say. Why would do-no-evil Google do such an apocalyptic thing, and, for that matter, how, technically, could a single company block access to more than 100 million websites?

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Court Upholds FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules

The rules aim to prevent internet providers from interfering with web traffic.

The answer has to do with the dark and murky world of website blacklists – ever-changing lists of websites that contain malicious software that might infect or damage people’s computers. There are many such lists – even tools, such as blacklistalert.org, that scan multiple blacklists to see if your IP address is on any of them.

Some lists are kind of mickey-mouse – repositories where people submit the names or IP addresses of suspect sites. Others, usually maintained by security companies that help protect other companies, are more high-tech, relying on “crawlers” – computer programs that continuously comb the internet.

But the best and longest list of suspect websites is Google’s, launched in May 2007. Because Google is crawling the web more extensively than anyone else, it is also in the best position to find malicious websites.

In 2012, Google acknowledged that each and every day it adds about 9,500 new websites to its quarantine list and displays malware warnings on the answers it gives to between 12 and 14 million search queries. It won’t reveal the exact number of websites on the list, but it is certainly in the millions on any given day.

In 2011, Google blocked an entire subdomain, co.cc, which alone contained 11 million websites, justifying its action by claiming that most of the websites in that domain appeared to be “spammy.” According to Matt Cutts, still the leader of Google’s web spam team, the company “reserves the right” to take such action when it deems it necessary. (The right? Who gave Google that right?)

And that’s nothing: According to The Guardian, on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009, at 2:40 pm GMT, Google blocked the entire internet for those impressive 40 minutes, supposedly, said the company, because of “human error” by its employees.

It would have been 6:40 am in Mountain View, California, where Google is headquartered. Was this time chosen because it is one of the few hours of the week when all of the world’sstock markets are closed? Could this have been another of the many pranks for which Google employees are so famous?

In 2008, Google invited the public to submit applications to join the “first permanent human colony on Mars.” Sorry, Marsophiles; it was just a prank.

When Google’s search engine shows you a search result for a site it has quarantined, you see warnings such as, “The site ahead contains malware” or “This site may harm your computer” on the search result.

That’s useful information if that website actually contains malware, either because the website was set up by bad guys or because a legitimate site was infected with malware by hackers. But Google’s crawlers often make mistakes, blacklisting websites that have merely been “hijacked,” which means the website itself isn’t dangerous but merely that accessing it through the search engine will forward you to a malicious site.

My own website, http://drrobertepstein.com, was hijacked in this way in early 2012. Accessing the website directly wasn’t dangerous, but trying to access it through the Google search engine forwarded users to a malicious website in Nigeria.

When this happens, Google not only warns you about the infected website on its search engine (which makes sense), it also blocks you from accessing the website directly through multiple browsers – even non-Google browsers. (Hmm. Now that’s odd. I’ll get back to that point shortly.)

Who Watches the Data Mongers?

The recent revelation that Facebook ran creepy “emotional contagion” tests shouldn’t be a surprise.

The mistakes are just one problem. The bigger problem is that even though it takes only a fraction of a second for a crawler to list you, after your site has been cleaned up Google’s crawlers sometimes take days or even weeks to delist you – long enough to threaten the existence of some businesses.

This is quite bizarre considering how rapidly automated online systems operate these days. Within seconds after you pay for a plane ticket online, your seat is booked, your credit card is charged, your receipt is displayed and a confirmation email shows up in your inbox – a complex series of events involving multiple computers controlled by at least three or four separate companies.

But when you inform Google’s automated blacklist system that your website is now clean, you are simply advised to check back occasionally to see if any action has been taken. To get delisted after your website has been repaired, you either have to struggle with the company’s online Webmaster tools, which are far from friendly, or you have to hire a security expert to do so – typically for a fee ranging between $1,000 and $10,000.

No expert, however, can speed up the mysterious delisting process; the best he or she can do is set it in motion.

So far, all I’ve told you is that Google’s crawlers scan the internet, sometimes find what appear to be suspect websites and put those websites on a quarantine list. That information is then conveyed to users through the search engine.

So far so good, except of course for the mistakes and the delisting problem; one might even say that Google is performing a public service, which is how some people who are familiar with the quarantine list defend it. But I also mentioned that Google somehow blocks people from accessing websites directly through multiple browsers.

How on earth could it do that? How could Google block you when you are trying to access a website using Safari, an Apple product, or Firefox, a browser maintained by Mozilla, the self-proclaimed “nonprofit defender of the free and open internet”?

The key here is browsers. No browser maker wants to send you to a malicious website, and because Google has the best blacklist, major browsers such as Safari and Firefox – and Chrome, of course, Google’s own browser, as well as browsers that load through Android, Google’s mobile operating system – check Google’s quarantine list before they send you to a website.

(In November 2014, Mozilla announced it will no longer list Google as its default search engine, but it also disclosed that it will continue to rely on Google’s quarantine list to screen users’ search requests.)

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If the site has been quarantined by Google, you see one of those big, scary images that say things like “Get me out of here!” or “Reported attack site!” At this point, given the default security settings on most browsers, most people will find it impossible to visit the site – but who would want to? If the site is not on Google’s quarantine list, you are sent on your way.

OK, that explains how Google blocks you even when you’re using a non-Google browser, butwhy do they block you? In other words, how does blocking you feed the ravenous advertising machine – the sine qua non of Google’s existence?

Have you figured it out yet? The scam is as simple as it is brilliant: When a browser queries Google’s quarantine list, it has just shared information with Google. With Chrome and Android, you are always giving up information to Google, but you are also doing so even if you are using non-Google browsers.

That is where the money is – more information about search activity kindly provided by competing browser companies. How much information is shared will depend on the particular deal the browser company has with Google.

In a maximum information deal, Google will learn the identity of the user; in a minimum information deal, Google will still learn which websites people want to visit – valuable data when one is in the business of ranking websites. Google can also charge fees for access to its quarantine list, of course, but that’s not where the real gold is.

Chrome, Android, Firefox and Safari currently carry about 92 percent of all browser trafficin the U.S. – 74 percent worldwide – and these numbers are increasing. As of this writing, that means Google is regularly collecting information through its quarantine list from more than 2.5 billion people.

Given the recent pact between Microsoft and Google, in coming months we might learn that Microsoft – both to save money and to improve its services – has also started using Google’s quarantine list in place of its own much smaller list; this would further increase the volume of information Google is receiving.

To put this another way, Google has grown, and is still growing, on the backs of some of its competitors, with end users oblivious to Google’s antics – as usual. It is yet another example of what I have called “Google’s Dance” – the remarkable way in which Google puts a false and friendly public face on activities that serve only one purpose for the company: increasing profit.

On the surface, Google’s quarantine list is yet another way Google helps us, free of charge, breeze through our day safe and well-informed. Beneath the surface, that list is yet another way Google accumulates more information about us to sell to advertisers.

You may disagree, but in my view Google’s blacklisting practices put the company into the role of thuggish internet cop – a role that was never authorized by any government, nonprofit organization or industry association.

It is as if the biggest bully in town suddenly put on a badge and started patrolling, shuttering businesses as it pleased, while also secretly peeping into windows, taking photos and selling them to the highest bidder.

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Your Phone Is Becoming More Powerful    Digital assistants soon will know everything about us. That could be both helpful and scary.

Consider: Heading into the holiday season in late 2013, an online handbag businesssuffered a 50 percent drop in business because of blacklisting. In 2009, it took an eco-friendly pest control company 60 days to leap the hurdles required to remove Google’s warnings, long enough to nearly go broke. And sometimes the blacklisting process appears to be personal: In May 2013, the highly opinionated PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak wondered “When Did Google Become the Internet Police?” after both his website and podcast site were blacklisted. He also ran into the delisting problem: “It’s funny,” he wrote, “how the site can be blacklisted in a millisecond by an analysis but I have to wait forever to get cleared by the same analysis doing the same scan. Why is that?”

Could Google really be arrogant enough to mess with a prominent journalist? According toCNN, in 2005 Google “blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year after the popular technology news website published personal information about one of Google’s founders” – Eric Schmidt – “in a story about growing privacy concerns.” The company declined to comment on CNN’s story.

Google’s mysterious and self-serving practice of blacklisting is one of many reasons Google should be regulated, just as phone companies and credit bureaus are.

The E.U.’s recent antitrust actions against Google, the recently leaked FTC staff reportabout Google’s biased search rankings, President Obama’s call for regulating internet service providers – all have merit, but they overlook another danger.

No one company, which is accountable to its shareholders but not to the general public, should have the power to instantly put another company out of business or block access to any website in the world. How frequently Google acts irresponsibly is beside the point; it has the ability to do so, which means that in a matter of seconds any of Google’s 37,000 employees with the right passwords or skills could laser a business or political candidate into oblivion or even freeze much of the world’s economy.

Some degree of censorship and blacklisting is probably necessary; I am not disputing that. But the suppression of information on the internet needs to be managed by, or at least subject to the regulations of, responsible public officials, with every aspect of their operations transparent to all.

Updated on June 23, 2016: Readers have called my attention to a 10th Google blacklist, which the company applies to its shopping service. In 2012, the shopping service bannedthe sale of weapons-related items, ( well done Google!)  including some items that could still be sold through AdWords.

Google’s shopping blacklisting policy, while reasonably banning the sale of counterfeit and copyrighted goods, also includes a catch-all category: Google can ban the sale of any product or service its employees deem to be “offensive or inappropriate.” No means of recourse is stated.

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