Freedom Research
June, 2009
from
FourWinds10 Website
In the following document we will give an
insight into the Jewish penetration of the Internet and also show the level
of cooperation between leading Jewish Internet entrepreneurs and the racist
Jewish Apartheid state of Israel.
The Jews - contrary to the "liberal" views they officially say they profess
- in their suppressive acts practically demonstrate that they always seek to
dominate the information flow, they don't tolerate any dissent.
It is just
as when Israel says "Shalom" while Israel's military at the very same time
pounds its Arab neighbor states with bombs and missiles.
The Arabs have learnt the hard way the falsehood of these Jewish statements,
it is now time for the rest of the non-Jewish world to get this right, and
to see that the freedom of information on the Net is seriously threatened.
This document will not cover the entire field.
Also, as it is time-bound to
an an analysis that is from a 2009 perspective - things will change.
Companies will change names, new actors will appear. But still this piece of
work is unique and will give a guide into the mechanisms behind the Net,
mechanisms that will continue to act even in the future.
And as many of
these Jewish entrepreneurs are rather young and the Internet seems to be
here to stay, we will hear from them for a long time onwards.
WARNING: Please note that the contents of some of the sites with revealing
Jewish material we have linked to below, may be altered by the Jews in the
future. Perhaps even information contrary to this document and Radio Islam
will replace the original material we had linked to. This has happened
before and for our part just illustrates the level of Jewish dishonesty.
Google
(which in 2006 acquired Youtube)
Founders Brin and Page are Jewish
The Jewish site SomethingJewish.co.uk writes in a review by Marcus J. Freed
of the book "Richistan", 05/09/2007 on "the Jewish boys from Google":
The global economy is vastly different to 40 years ago and today’s new
billionaires include the Jewish boys
from Google, Sergey Brin and Larry
Page, along with thousands of other ‘instapreneurs’.
Larry Page - who shares the title of Google President even has an Israeli
family connection.
B'nai B'rith Magazine, paper of one of the mightiest Jewish organizations,
writes in their article "The Searchmasters", spring 2006, on "...Larry Page,
whose mother Gloria is Jewish". The Magazine continues:
Larry's maternal grandfather, however, followed a much different path. He
was an early settler in Israel, making aliyah in the spartan desert town of
Arad.
Sergei Brin and Larry Page - "the Jewish boys from Google"
The Jewish entourage in Google
The Jew Craig Silverstein was the first employee hired by Google's founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The Jewish woman Susan Wojcicki was the one who gave Google office space to
start the business. Susan Wojcicki has since become Vice President of
Product Management at Google.
This while here likewise Jewish younger sister Anne Wojcicki, a
biotechnology specialist, in May 2007 during "a traditional Jewish wedding"
ceremony (according to Israeli paper Ha'aretz, May 29, 2008) married the
Google President Sergey Brin. Keeping everything neatly within the tribe.
SomethingJewish.co.uk writes 24/05/2007:
Jewgle wedding
by Leslie Bunder
The world's wealthiest Jewish bachelor is no more. Sergey Brin, co-founder
of search giant Google and worth over $16bn got hitched to his long-time
love Anne Wojcicki earlier this month in the Bahamas, but so secret was the
wedding, that it has only recently been confirmed.
According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, the wedding took place
under a chuppah with both Brin and Wojcicki confirming their commitment to
the Jewish faith, though no rabbi is said to have officiated at the
ceremony.
Wojcicki, is the sister of Susan Wojcicki who gave Google office space to
start the business.
In 2001, Brin's mother Eugenia commented she hoped he would find a Jewish
bride. "I hope he would keep that in mind," she said.
Wojcicki, who has a background in biotechnology, has been active in Jewish
projects and currently sits on the board of Reboot, a venture that engages
Jews to explore their culture.
Recently, Wojcicki launched a biotech company 23andMe which has seen Google
itself invest several million dollars into it.
Justin Rosenstein was a top engineer at Google serving three years as
Google's Product Manager for Page Creator. Rosenstein was one of the first
employees that Facebook's Jewish boss Mark Zuckerberg poached from Google as
Facebook began its rise in 2007.
In 2008 Rosenstein left Facebook with
Facebook's likewise Jewish co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, to form a new
company.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz (left) and Justin Rosenstein
Sheryl Sandberg
Another Jewish profile who has been important in the shaping of Google is
Sheryl Sandberg.
Sheryl Sandberg was Google Vice President of Global Online Sales &
Operations, a position from where she built and managed the online sales
channels for advertising and publishing and operations for consumer products
globally. Sandberg was behind Google's AdWords, and sat in the board of
Google's philanthropic arm Google.org.
Before Google, Sandberg worked for the Jew Lawrence Summers, first when he
was Chief Economist of the World Bank, then as his Chief of Staff when
Summers was Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration.
The Jewish Chronicle (December 4, 2008) ran an article on the book "Jewish
Wisdom for Business Success" - a book by Rabbi Levi Brackman and Jewish
journalist Sam Jaffe - where they argue that the Torah and ancient rabbinic
texts are not simply guides for holy living, they can also provide helpful
career advice. The Jewish Chronicle writes:
Their book combines tips on good business practice gleaned from the Bible,
Midrash and Kabbalah with examples of success stories such as Andy Klein,
who quit corporate law to start a brewery and ended up with an investment
bank, or Sheryl Sandberg, who rose to become vice president for global sales
for Google.
And while there are role models to emulate, there also ones to
avoid: Pharaoh the gas ruach (man of coarse spirit) or Korah, the ba’al
ga’avah, the arrogant egotist.
Sheryl Sandberg
As Vice President of Google's Global Sales Sandberg was behind the AdWords
project which links paid advertisements to search results, a gadget that
allowed Google to turn their search engine into "extremely profitable
business", as Rabbi Levi Brackman and journalist Sam Jaffe write in their
book "Jewish Wisdom for Business Success", p. 2.
They have the case of
Sheryl Sandberg in the first chapter in their book as an example of Jewish
business sucess. In the same p. 2 of their book:
Early in 2008, she left Google to become the second-in-command of Facebook,
the emerging social-networking company.
Sheryl Sandberg - Jewish "second-in-command of Facebook" - is presently
Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. As COO, Sandberg is responsible for
helping Facebook scale its operations and expand its presence globally.
Sandberg manages sales, marketing, business development, human resources,
public policy, privacy and communications and reports directly to Facebook’s
Jewish CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Sheryl Sandberg is well connected to the Jewish community and the "philantropy"
business, a favourite Jewish pastime where they can take a small part of
their enormous wealth gained from the "goyim" and put it in small projects
completely after their taste, to show how humane, generous and an openminded
they are. Sandberg was thus with Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the Jewish Community
Federation of San Francisco, on a joint venture "addressing global poverty
and social justice issues through philanthropy", December 10, 2008.
She also sponsors Jewish activities at for instance the Joshman Family
Jewish Community Center, a center that not so surprisingly also has an
"Israel connection", as their website says. The Joshman Center writes on
this "Israel connection":
Our mission is to strengthen relationships between American Jews and the
Israeli émigré community and to
build a deeper connection to Israel.
Sandberg was included in Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women of 2007.
She is married to former Yahoo! music head David Goldberg with whom she has
two children.
More Google Jews - Elliot Schrage and Ethan Beard
Elliot Schrage
The Jew Elliot Schrage was since 2005 Google's Vice President of
Communications and Public Affairs, the man who ran Google's PR. He had this
important position until May 2008 when he left for Facebook to work under
the same role.
At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product
PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and
internal communications. Before Google Shrage served as a Senior Fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations, the Zionist infested "public policy think
tank".
Schrage together with the Jewish US Holocaust Museum launched the Darfur
tool to Google Earth (see article
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google Join in
Online Darfur Mapping Initiative):
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today joined with Google
(NASDAQ: GOOG) to unveil an unprecedented online mapping initiative aimed at
furthering awareness and action in the Darfur region of Sudan. Crisis in
Darfur, enables more than 200 million Google Earth™ mapping service users
worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently
unfolding in Darfur.
The Museum has assembled content - photographs, data and
eyewitness testimony - from a number of sources that are brought together for
the first time in Google Earth. This information will appear as a Global
Awareness layer in Google Earth starting today.
Google Earth’s Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications and
Public Affairs, joined Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield and Darfurian
Daowd Salih at the launch.
Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention
Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential
genocides allowing citizens, governments and institutions to access
information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.
"Educating today’s generation about the atrocities of the past and present
can be enhanced by technologies such as Google Earth," says Bloomfield.
"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world’s record is terrible. We
hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for
the world to ignore those who need us the most."
"At Google, we believe technology can be a catalyst for education and
action," said Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President, Global Communications
and Public Affairs. "Crisis in Darfur will enable Google Earth users to
visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join
the Museum’s efforts in responding to this continuing international
catastrophe."
Of course spreading the knowledge of Israel's genocidal destruction of
Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza in the 2009 assault is not part of this
education.
Ethan Beard
Another actor is Ethan Beard who was Google's Director of Social Media. He
has since left for Facebook to become Director of Facebook's Business
Development and then Facebook's Director of Platform marketing.
There are
indications that he is Jewish.
Manber - Google's Israeli Vice President of Engineering
Google's Vice President of Engineering, Udi Manber, is Israeli and a
graduate from the Israel's Technion Institute in Haifa.
He has a long record of top jobs in Internet related positions.
Manber became the chief scientist at Yahoo! in 1998.
In 2002, he joined Amazon.com, where he became "chief algorithms officer"
and a Vice President. He was later appointed CEO of the Amazon subsidiary
company A9.com, where he led the company's A9 search engine work. (Please
see an article on Amazon's support for Israel.)
In 2006, Manber was hired by Google as one of Google's Vice Presidents of
Engineering. In December 2007, he announced Knol, Google's new project to
create a knowledge repository.
Mandber as a senior Google operative, interacts with the Judeo-Zionist
community.
Here is an advertisement which discloses how Google's Manber will sit with a
Rabbi and discuss Talmud
and the Web:
Thu Sep 18, 2008
Contemporary Jewish Museum presents
Google’s Talmud: The Web, Jewish Culture, and the Power of Associative
Thinking
Location -
The Contemporary Jewish Museum
736 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
district: Downtown/Financial District
Location Date and Time
-
Thu Sep 18, 2008 (7:00 PM - 8:30 PM)
Description
One of the hallmarks of Jewish culture and scholarship is an emphasis on
commentary and “associative thinking,” a method essential to the creation of
the Talmud and thousands of years of Biblical commentary.
Udi Manber,
Google’s Vice President for Engineering and best-selling technology critic
Howard Rheingold will join Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in a panel discussion
exploring the connections between art, technology, and Jewish culture, as
seen through the new social, intellectual, and spiritual implications of the
idea of “search.” This will be followed by a discussion with Dan Schifrin,
the Museum’s director of public programs and writer in residence.
Advertisement for the event was also
made in the Jewish Weekly.
Udi Manber, Google's Israeli Vice President of Engineering
Google’s Jewish guru of giving
In the article "Google’s
guru of giving",
January 24, 2008, The Financial Express details Larry Brilliant.
Dr
Brilliant led the Internet giant’s philanthropic arm Google.org, where he
ruled over a and 40-strong team:
As well as adopting the informal company motto, “Don’t be evil”, the
internet search firm’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, decided to
commit Google to engage in serious philanthropy.
Innovative as ever, they
created a new sort of philanthropic entity, a division of the company that
could pursue its mission through both for-profit investing and making
charitable grants. This, they hoped, would one day “eclipse Google itself in
overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant
resources to the largest of the world’s problems.”
It would be funded with 1% of the firm’s equity, annual profits and
employees’ time.
In February 2006, after a lengthy search, Dr Brilliant was appointed to run
Google.org. Media reports focused on the old hippy’s colourful past, not
least his spell as a doctor with the Grateful Dead, a legendary 1960s rock
band. What attracted his new employers was his unique record of success both
in running Silicon Valley tech firms and in implementing large-scale
solutions to big social problems.
[...]
Though he has taken nearly two years to produce a strategy for Google.org,
Dr Brilliant has not been taking things easy. He may have added a taste for
Hindu meditation to his Detroit Jewish roots (he once shared a guru with
Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs), but he is a driven man, travelling widely and
seeking advice from hundreds of people, pushing himself harder than friends
say is wise for a sexagenarian.
When he arrived at Google.org he found
extraordinarily high expectations, a blank sheet of paper to fill with a
strategy, and “microscopic attention” from outside on what it was doing.
During his time as Google's philantropic boss Brilliant combined his work
with his dedication for Jews and Judaism. For instance Brilliant, as
Executive Director of Google.org, appeared as a speaker at the Jewish
Community Federation in San Fransisco's Business Leadership Council
Breakfast meeting. February 28, 2007. According to the organization's
homepage (http://www.sfjcf.org/aboutjcf/press/2007/brilliant.asp):
Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, will share his vision for
“Healing a Broken World” with attendees at the second annual Business
Leadership Council Breakfast on Wednesday, February 28, 2007.
[...]
Dr. Larry Brilliant is the Executive Director of Google.org, the umbrella
organization which includes the Google Foundation as well as partnerships
with and contributions to for-profit and nonprofit entities.
[...]
Sponsored by AT&T and Levisohn Venture Partners, this special BLC event is
open to all donors who contribute $1,000 or more to the 2007 San
Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation’s Annual Campaign. Donors under
the age of 40 who contribute $500 are also welcome.
The Jewish Community Federation is the central organization for fundraising,
planning, outreach and leadership development for Jewish communities in San
Francisco, the Peninsula, and Marin and Sonoma counties. In fiscal year
2006, the Federation’s annual campaign allocated $18.3 million to some 60
agencies providing social services, educational and cultural programs in the
Bay Area, in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere in the world.
In fiscal year
2006, the Federation’s Endowment Fund, with assets exceeding $1.8 billion,
provided more than $203 million for a variety of grants, seed projects and
emergency needs. For more information, call 415.777.0411 or visit
www.sfjcf.org.
So here we can see how the Google boss
fraternizes with an organization that
is interrelated to the Zionist state.
In April 2009 Larry Brilliant, after 3 years at Google, said he was parting
ways with the Internet giant, leaving Google.org to join a new organization
set up by former eBay President and Jew, Jeff Skoll.
But Dr Brilliant also
said he would remain as an advisor to Google.
Google's Israel connections
Here follows a most revealing article on how Google's Sergey Brin,
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Yahoo's President Susan Decker, are invited
by the Israeli leadership to Israel, during Israel's 60th anniversary
celebrations:
Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May
by Guy Grimland
Ha'aretz Correspondent
01/04/2008
Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on
technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May
13-15.
The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon
Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli political, religious and
financial leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.
The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the
future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish
world.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference,
as will French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Vaclev
Havel, Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, and Georgia President Michael
Saakashvili
The Israel News Agency
also writes:
In attendance, in addition to many national presidents and heads of state
will be dignitaries from the worlds of business and academia.
Among them are
Sergey Brin, founder of Google and Susan Decker of Yahoo. Dr. Miriam and
Sheldon Adelson will be serving as the honorary chairpersons for the Israel
60th Birthday Presidential Conference which has enthusiastically attracted
the attention of Jewish leaders and others worldwide.
And B'nai B rith Magazine
are also happy
with the representation:
I was particularly impressed with the large numbers of young people in
attendance, representing Israeli universities and aliyah organizations like
MASA.
At the conclusion of the panel discussion moderated by Israeli
entrepreneur Yossi Vardi and featuring, among others, Brin, the co-founder
of Google; Susan Decker of Yahoo; and Rupert Murdoch, several dozen young
adults crowded on stage to meet the speakers - and more than one business card
was exchanged.
Google's Sergey Brin at Western Wall, Jerusalem
We write more on the Zionists attending this conference in our section on
Yahoo!.
Google's business cooperation with Israel
Ha'aretz online edition 15/05/2008, writes:
Google co-founder lauds Israeli innovation in tech, environment
by Lior Kodner
Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Thursday lauded Israeli innovations in
technology and environmental efforts, saying Israel "takes our climate
challenges very seriously."
Brin, visiting as a delegate to President Shimon Peres' Presidential
Conference, told Haaretz that these challenges have "great geopolitical
ramifications on this country, in addition to environmental ones."
He noted that Israel's leading efforts in the field of sustainable energy,
saying:
"Obviously in Israel they need to innovate with water and things
like that. I was really intrigued to see drip irrigation. I just realized
that came out of Israel."
Brin gave particular attention to Israel's work in environmentally friendly
transportation.
A prototype of the world's first fully electric car was demonstrated for the
first time on Sunday in Tel Aviv, by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi.
Developers hope the car will revolutionize transportation in the country and
serve as a pilot for the rest of the world. If all goes as planned, Israel
will be the first country to have electric cars on its highways in large
numbers in the next few years.
Brin also spoke about new projects ongoing at Google, including the "huge
range of efforts" being made on mobile technology and the patience needed in
the field.
"I think it takes a while to
develop the technology, to
develop,
to educate advertisers about it," he said.
"We have to bootstrap everything.
our search based targeted ads took a number of yearsand people are expecting
overnight that you work a miracle. It is a combination of technology,
advertising networks, bad user expectations. All those things have to come
together and that takes time," he said.
During his visit, Brin toured Jewish sites, including the Western Wall in
the Old City of Jerusalem.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos,
announced the establishment of an R&D center in Israel. Ha'aretz 30/01/2006
writes:
Google founder plans R&D center in Israel
by Guy Rolnik
DAVOS, Switzerland
Google “is in the process of establishing an R&D center
in Israel,” Sergey Brin, a founder of the Internet search titan, told
Haaretz during the World Economic Forum here. Brin and co-founder Larry Page
were among the more visible participants at the economic conference. Both
have a solid connection with Israeli entrepreneurs in the Internet field.
A Google executive told Haaretz that the company had recently recruited a
large number of academics, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians and
economists for additional development of the company’s search engine
algorithm and its smart ad systems on the Net. There is still a shortage of
quality personnel for developing analytic tools and predicting the massive
volume of information accumulated on the search engine.
[...]
Last summer, Google decided to establish a local marketing and sales branch
in Israel to bolster its advertising revenues in the Israel market. Google
hired Meir Brand to head its Israel office, choosing a former Microsoft
executive just as it had done in China.
[...]
Ha'aretz interview with Sergey Brin in Israel, May 29, 2008:
[...]
This is Brin's third visit to Israel. The first time was with his parents,
when he was still a teenager, and the second was in September 2003, when
Google was still a relatively small, privately owned company. Last week,
however, Brin arrived here as the head of one of the largest and most
influential companies in the world.
How has Israel changed since your previous visits?
"It's pretty impressive just to see how the tech industry has continued to
grow. The development, kind of just looking at the city of Tel Aviv. I mean,
there are a bunch of buildings. Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like there are
lots of buildings that weren't here when I was here last. And I've just seen
some of the companies and their state of development, the levels developed
here - it's just incredible."
[...]
Did your family ever consider immigrating to Israel?
"Boy, I need to ask them that. In fact, my great-grandmother lived in the
U.S. for a period of time, so we did have some ties to the U.S. I think my
dad actually had a colleague who had moved to the U.S., who had given him
greater certainty [with respect to] the job market. And those were the big
factors. But I can ask. My parents are here with me - I mean, not in the
office, but in Israel."
In hindsight, considering what you see now in the U.S. and Israel, if your
parents had come here, do you think we would have Google today?
[Laughs] "Look, I've been very lucky in my life, and I'm sure there've been
lots of random circumstances that have contributed to that, so I probably
would not be the first to change it. But looking at the kinds of innovation
and development that I see here now, I certainly think it's possible to
enjoy great success coming to Israel."
Google's cooperation with Jewish censors
Below are some articles illustrating how Google assists Jewish Internet
censorship.
The articles show that Google follows dictates from ADL and the
Zionist Organization of America, that Google "robots" censor pro-Palestinian
bloggers, and that sites like Radio Islam are censored.
-
ADL Praises Google for Responding to Concerns About Rankings of Hate Sites
includes letter from Google Jew Sergey Brin and Google's
explanation for the
word "Jew"
-
How the Zionist Organization of America shapes Google's policies
ZOA complains about "anti-Semitism" ...and Google adjusts promptly
-
ZOA Convinces Google to Change the Earth
the Zionist Organization of America changes the way we view the World
through Google Earth
-
Google's war on pro-Palestinian bloggers
Google's "robots" unmasked, Is Google ethnic cleansing the Internet?
-
Uruknet cut off from Google News again! - external link
information on how an Iraq war information site is being censored by Google
-
Jew Gotta’ Friend At Google - what is "hate speech"?
Google News stops indexing what it calls "hate
speech"
-
"Google This"! - on Google's Israel rush
by Philip Jones, Rense.com
-
Google Fascists?
looking into the worrying implications of Google's near monopoly of web
search engines
-
Censorship of the Internet - study reveals Google censorship of Radio
Islam's sites
by Germar Rudolf
Here we will give attention to one extra article to show how the Zionist
organization ADL cooperates with Google.
In 2007 a conference was held in
Israel with ADL, the International Network Against Cyberhate, and Google's
Israel Director Meir Brand. Ha'aretz, 12/11/2007, writes:
Organizers of the conference representing the Anti-Defamation League, a
Jewish group that counters anti-Semitism, brought examples of anti-Jewish
hate material freely available on the Internet, and participants called for
more action to stop it.
[...]
He [Meir Brand] said Google removes results from its search index only when
required to by law, for example, when copyright infringement is an issue. In
Germany and Austria, he said, Google removes Nazi content, which is against
the law there.
Recognizing the problem, however, Google has instituted a warning system for
hate entries, taking viewers to a page warning that some of the search
results may be offensive, and noting that opinions expressed do not
necessarily reflect Google's views.
Just as a small reminder ADL's Director Abraham Foxman was one of many top
Jewish dignitaries in Israel celebrating Israel's 60th Anniversary back in
2008.
Appendix
Excerpts from the article "Sergey Brin: the Google revolutionary", by Mark Malseed, The Jewish Chronicle, April 6, 2007:
"This intensity emerges during weekly strategy meetings, where he and Page
-
who share the title of Google president - command the last word on approving
new products, reviewing new hires and funding long-term research.
Brin also holds sway over the unscientific but all-important realms of
people, policy and politics."
"Brin’s Jewish sensibility is, likewise, grounded in his family’s experience
of life in the Soviet Union, and their eventual emigration to the United
States. “I do somewhat feel like a minority,” he says. “Being Jewish,
especially in Russia, is one aspect of that. Then, being an immigrant in the
US. And then, since I was significantly ahead in maths in school, being the
youngest one in a class. I never felt like a part of the majority. So I
think that is part of the Jewish heritage in a way.”"
"As a young boy, though, he had only a vague awareness of why his family
wanted to leave their native Russia. He picked up the ugly details of the
antisemitism they faced bit by bit years later, he says. Nevertheless, he
sensed, early on, all of the things that he wasn't - he wasn't Russian; he
wasn't welcome in his own country; he wasn't going to get a fair shake in
advancing through its schools. Further complicating his understanding of his
Jewish identity was the fact that, under the atheist Soviet regime, there
were few religious or cultural models of what being Jewish was. The
negatives were all he had."
"For many Soviet Jews, exit visas never came. But, in May 1979, the Brins
were granted papers to leave the USSR. "We hoped it would happen," Genia
says, "but we were completely surprised by how quickly it did."
The timing
was fortuitous - they were among the last Jews allowed to leave until the
Gorbachev era. Sergey Brin, who turned six that summer, remembers what
followed as simply unsettling" - literally so.
"We were in different places
from day to day," he says. The journey was a blur. First Vienna, where the
family was met by representatives of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which
helped thousands of Eastern European Jews establish new lives in the West.
Then, on to the suburbs of Paris, where Michael's "unofficial" Jewish PhD
adviser, Anatole Katok, had arranged a temporary research position for him."
"One thing the Brins shared with thousands of other families emigrating to
the West from the Soviet Union was the discovery that, suddenly, they were
free to be Jews. "Russian Jews lacked the vocabulary to even articulate what
they were feeling," says Lenny Gusel, the founder of a San Francisco-based
network of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
"They were considered Jews back home.
Here, they were considered Russians. Many longed just to assimilate as
Americans." Gusel's group, which he calls the "79ers", after the peak year
of immigration in the 1970s, and its New York cousin, RJeneration, have
attracted hundreds of 20- and 30-something immigrants who grapple with their
Jewish identity.
"Sergey is the absolute emblem of our group, the number one
Russian-Jewish immigrant success story," he says.
The Brins were no different from their fellow immigrants in that being
Jewish was an ethnic, not a religious, experience.
"We felt our Jewishness
in different ways, not by keeping kosher or going to synagogue. It is
genetic," explains Sergey's father Michael. "We were not very religious. My
wife doesn't eat on Yom Kippur; I do."
Genia interjects:
"We always have a
Passover dinner. We have a Seder. I have the recipe for gefilte fish from my
grandmother."
Religious or not, on arriving in the suburbs of Washington,
the Brins were adopted by a synagogue, Mishkan Torah of Greenbelt, Maryland,
which helped them acquire furnishings for their home.
"We didn't need that
much, but we saw how much the community helped other families," Genia says.
Sergey attended Hebrew school at Mishkan Torah for almost three years but
hated the language instruction - and everything else, too.
"He was teased
there by other kids and he begged us not to send him any more," his other
remembers. "Eventually, it worked."
The Conservative congregation turned out
to be too religious for the Brins and they drifted.
When a three-week trip to Israel awakened 11- year-old Sergey's interest in
all things Jewish, the family inquired at another synagogue about restarting
studies to prepare for a barmitzvah.
But the rabbi said it would take more
than a year to catch up and Sergey abandoned the pursuit. If there was one
Jewish value the Brin family upheld without reservation, Michael says, it
was scholarship.
Sergey Brin
"What came next is Google legend. In the spring of 1995, Sergey met an
opinionated computer- science student from the University of Michigan named
Larry Page.
They argued over the course of two days, each finding the other
cocky and obnoxious. They also formed an instant bond, relishing the
intellectual combat. Like Sergey, Larry is the son of high-powered
intellects steeped in computer science. The two young graduate students also
share a Jewish background.
Larry's maternal grandfather made aliyah, and his mother was raised Jewish.
Larry, however, brought up in the mould of his father, a computer-science
professor whose religion was technology, does not readily identify as a Jew.
He, too, never had a barmitzvah.
Larry and Sergey soon began working on ways
to harness information on the web, spending so much time together that they
took on a joint identity, Larry and Sergey.
"Their venture quickly bore fruit. After viewing a quick demo, Sun
Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim (himself a Jewish immigrant from
Germany) wrote a $100,000 cheque to "Google, Inc"."
"They are without a doubt two of the most eligible bachelors on Google
Earth, but both are reported to be in serious relationships - Sergey is
reportedly engaged to Anne Wojcicki, a healthcare investor and the sister of
Google executive Susan Wojcicki, who owned the garage where Google got
started. In a 2001 interview, Genia said she hoped Sergey would find
"somebody exciting who could be really interesting to him... [who] had a
sense of humour that could match his".
As one might expect, she also prefers
that Sergey marry a Jewish girl.
"I hope that he would keep it in mind," she
confided."
"The Ten Commandments it is not, but Google does operate with a moral code
of sorts. "Don't be evil" is the maxim supposed to guide behaviour at all
levels of the company. When pressed for clarification, Google chief
executive officer Eric Schmidt has famously said: "Evil is whatever Sergey
says is evil."
One malevolent practice, in Google's view, is tampering with
or otherwise censoring the list of results produced by a Google search. An
early test of the Google founders' commitment to providing unfiltered
information struck very close to home. The antisemitic website Jew Watch
appeared prominently in Google results for searches on the term "Jew",
prompting Jewish groups to demand that Google remove the site from the top
of its listings. Google refused.
Sergey said at the time: "I certainly am
very offended by the site, but the objectivity of our rankings is one of our
very important principles." As a compromise, Google displays a warning at
the top of questionable pages."
"Viewed against the backdrop of Sergey's distaste for authority, the
decision to cave in to China's totalitarian leadership seems out of
character. Sergey's public comments on the matter have evolved to reflect
this contradiction. While defending the decision at first, he later
acknowledged that Google had "compromised" its principles.
"Perhaps now the
principled approach makes more sense," he has said, but adding: "It's not
where we chose to go right now."
Does a company founded by two Jews, no
matter how assimilated, necessarily retain some defining Jewish
characteristics? The Google masterminds' penchant for pushing boundaries -
without asking permission - might as well be called chutzpah.
However you label it, it is an attitude that runs deeply through Google and
may help explain why the company is embroiled in lawsuits over many of its
new projects: the aggressive scanning of library books it does not own;
display of copyrighted material; and copyright issues connected to its
acquisition of YouTube, the online video site whose popularity rests in part
on the availability of pirated television and movie clips.
Google's first
employee and several other early hires were Jewish and, when the initial
winter-holiday season rolled around, a menorah rather than a Christmas tree
graced the lobby. Google's former chef, Charlie Ayers, cooked up latkes,
brisket, tzimmes and matzah-ball soup for Chanucah meals and turned the
Passover Seder into a Google tradition.
To some, Google's emphasis on academic achievement - hiring only the best
and the brightest and employing hundreds of PhDs - could be considered
Jewish. So, perhaps, could "Don't be evil". With its hint of tikkun olam,
the Kabbalistic concept of "repairing the world", it reflects the company's
commitment to aggressive philanthropy.
Nevertheless, he and his parents do support a few charities.
"There are
people who helped me and my family out. I do feel responsible to those
organizations," he says.
One of them is Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the
group that helped the Brins come to the United States. Genia serves on its
board and heads its project to create a digital record of Jewish-immigrant
archives.
Has Sergey been a target of anti-semitism since he left the Soviet
Union?
"I've experienced it," he says. "Usually, it is fairly subtle. People are
on about all the media companies being run by Jewish executives,
with the implication of a conspiracy... I think I'm fortunate that
it doesn't really affect me personally, but there are hints of it
all around. That's why I think it is worth noting."
Several years ago, Sergey and Larry visited a school for gifted maths
students near Tel Aviv.
When they took to the stage, the audience roared, as
if they were rock stars. Every student there, many of them, like Sergey,
immigrants, from the former Soviet Union, knew of Google.
Sergey began, to
the crowd's delight, with a few words in Russian, which he still speaks at
home with his parents.
"I have standard Russian-Jewish parents," he then
continued in English. "My dad is a maths professor. They have a certain
attitude about studies. And I think I can relate that here, because I was
told that your school recently got seven out of the top 10 places in a maths
competition throughout all Israel."
The students applauded their achievement and the recognition from Sergey,
unaware that he was setting up a joke.
"What I have to say," he continued,
"is in the words of my father: ‘What about the other three?'"
The students
laughed. They knew where he was coming from.
That Sergey has parlayed his
skills into unimaginable business success does not mean those "standard
Russian-Jewish parents" are ready to let him off the academic hook."
Facebook
"He met Mark Zuckerberg in 2002 after they had joined the same fraternity
which primarily concentrated on activities within the Jewish community.
'We ate Shabbat dinner together,' Hasit said. 'Every year we raised money
for charities in Israel. Mark was one of the members of the fraternity, like
many other Jewish students at Harvard.'
Hasit, who wears a skullcap, says the 25-year-old Zuckerberg feels an
affinity with Judaism. 'He fasts on Yom Kippur,' Hasit says of Zuckerberg.
'Sometimes he would come to the Hillel House, a Jewish organization that ran
various activities.' "
- The Jew Ariel Hasit, who now has joined the Israeli Defense Forces, on his
personal experience of the Jewish Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg,
Ha'aretz, 10/05/2009. |
Jewish founder and CEO
The popular social
networking site Facebook, launched in February 2004, has
a 100% Jewish founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Jews readily boast about this fact. The Jewish etnocentrist site Jew or Not
Jew: Choosing the Chosen People, see logo below, have a special entry for
Zuckerberg (as they have for Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page), where
Zuckerberg gets their "Jew Score" total of 12 (4 + 4 + 4).
The site, which should be reagarded as some case of internal Jewish humour,
explains the meaning of this score:
About the Jew Score
We evaluate how Jewish a person is based on three factors. How Jewish they
are internally, how Jewish they are externally and how much we want that
person to be a Jew in the first place.
In practice, the I Score tends to refer to birth history with some
adjustments for how we imagine they see/saw themselves. The O Score is for
how Jewish they look and act. The K Score stands for Kvell (pride) and is
subject to the whims of the creators of this website.
The Jew Score refers to our opinion only and is affected by but not
definitive of one's actual Jewishness.
The site of the World Jewish Digest, as another example, also counts Mark
Zuckerberg as one of their examples of Jewish influentials in their list "10
to watch in 2008 - WJS's shortlist to Jewish standouts" . Zuckerberg, "born
into a well-to-do Jewish-American family in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y", gets the
rankning place of 3 in their list of 10 influential Jews.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg's Jewish entourage at Facebook
The New York Times, May 13, 2009, reported:
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that “Facebook was founded by Mark
Zuckerberg, a Jewish former Harvard University student.”
Mr.. Schnitt [a Facebook spokesman] told ABC that while some employees of the
social-networking service came from families marked by the Holocaust, that
was not influencing their decision:
Many of us at Facebook have direct personal connection to the Holocaust,
through parents who were forced to flee Europe or relatives who could not
escape. We believe in Facebook’s mission that giving people tools to make
the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than
censorship, though we recognize that others, including those at the company,
disagree.
So here we learn from the Facebook spokesman
Mr.. Schnitt that "many of us at
Facebook have direct personal connection to the Holocaust", which of course
means nothing else than that they are Jewish.
So who are these Jewish actors?
To begin with, in the absolute beginning, when Zuckerberg decided to spread
his new Facebook project to other schools than Harvard, he enlisted help
from his Jewish friend Dustin Moskovitz.
Moskovitz then became the Vice
President of Engineering of Facebook.
Dustin Moskovitz
They got their first funding from another Jew, German-born technology
entrepreneur Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal.
We here recommend reading an article from the The Guardian (14 Jan, 2008) on
the people behind Facebook which has more information on Thiel.
The Guardian
concludes that:
"... the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture
capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel."
Peter Thiel
As a typical Jewish etnocentrist Thiel prefers to deal with other Jews. His
business partner with whom he who founded PayPal is the Ukrainian-born
now-American Jew Max Rafael Levchin.
David Sacks
George Zachary
Other Jews Thiel is interacting with are David Sacks, PayPal's former chief
operating officer, and George Zachary, "a friend of Max and Peter's" and
partner of the Jew Ed Skoll from eBay.
Below follows an excerpt from "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The
Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0", by Sarah Lacy, (see:
http://www.metroactive.com/metro/06.11.08/cover-supermen-0824.html) on
Thiel's "PayPal mafia":
The PayPal mafia even had Hollywood success. Jeff Skoll was one of the first
eBay executives who became friends with the PayPal crew when eBay bought the
company in 2002. He started up Participant Productions on a lark, and it has
been one of the most profitable productions companies in Hollywood.
Among
its first four films were Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, North Country,
and An Inconvenient Truth. Skoll's success convinced Max and Peter to start
dabbling in Hollywood, bankrolling the 2006 indie flick Thank You for
Smoking, along with David Sacks, PayPal's former chief operating officer.
While Sacks continued to play the Hollywood game, he also launched a new
social networking site for families, called Geni.com. It allows people to
fill out their family trees and link them to the family trees of spouses and
in-laws.
Anyone on the tree can add to the tree, the idea being that over
time you discover people you're related to that you didn't know. It's a bold
idea, one of the first Web 2.0 start-ups aimed squarely at families. Peter Thiel, naturally, backed it early on. And in Geni's first venture capital
round with Charles River Ventures, it got nosebleed $100 million valuation.
The CRV partner who wrote the check was George Zachary, Skoll's early
partner in Participant Productions and a friend of Max and Peter's. By 2006,
the PayPal mafia was an incestuous world where, for now, everyone seemed to
be making lots of money.
Thiel makes up one fourth of the Board members of Facebook. Thus apart from
providing the money, he really has a lot of influence - just as The Guardian
had noted.
Thiel - "the real face behind Facebook" - is a Zionist
What The Guardian failed to tell is that Thiel also has an Israel agenda.
The Israeli-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
writes:
On Tuesday, May 12, 2009, The Adelson Institute hosted Richard Perle, former
assistant to the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Defense Policy
Board Advisory Committee during the Reagan administration, and Peter Thiel,
Co-Founder of PayPal and President of Clarium Capital Management. The topic
of discussion was: “The first 100 days of the Obama administration".
Perle briefed the Adleson Institue's staff and faculty and said that the
outcome of Obama's new approach towards adversaries will be tested in a few
months time.
Thiel, who participated in Perle's briefing, said that there is an
incredible gap between Israel's reality and its potential. People talk about
China, India and Brazil as emerging market countries, he added, while Israel
is underrated. According to Thiel, all it takes is a short visit to Israel
in order to appreciate the incredible talent, intensity and drive of the
Israelis.
It should here be reminded that Richard Perle that Thiel met in a briefing,
is the infamous Neo-con from the Bush era who was one of the main Jewish
architects behind the Iraq invasion and war in 2003.
Facebook sponsor Peter Thiel reveals his Israel agenda in a
video speech he
made for the Adelson Institute.
The Adelson Institute gives the following description of Thiel's video
message:
Israel is Truly the Country of the Future
May 17, 2009
There is an incredible gap between Israel's reality and its potential, says
Peter Thiel, Co-Founder of PayPal and President of Clarium Capital
Management.
Thiel, a guest of the Adelson Institute for Strategic studies,
participated in Richard Perle's briefing at the Adelson Institute. People
talk about China, India and Brazil as emerging market countries, says Thiel,
while Israel is underrated. All it takes is a short visit in order to
appreciate the incredible talent, intensity and drive of the Israelis.
In the video Peter Thiel - economic sponsor and Facebook Board member -
hails the Jewish state of Israel. Here follows a transcript of some of his
statements in the video:
"I believe that Israel is a truly extraordinary place."
"...an incredible potential..."
"Just visiting here [in Israel] for a few days one is always struck by the
incredible talent and intensity and drive of the people."
"I think that if Israel is able to resolve some of these issues, that
surround it over the next few years, it will probably be the best place in
the world."
"I believe the future is not in cheap labour or cheap capital or in real
estate. I believe the future is in technology and in that sense perhaps
Israel is truly the country of the future."
The Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in
Jerusalem is a 100 % Zionist institution.
We here reproduce the Mission Statement of the institute Thiel cooperates
with:
The Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in
Jerusalem is an academic and research institute founded by its chairman,
Natan Sharansky, in 2007.
The Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
develops, articulates and builds support for the strategic principles needed
to address the challenges currently facing Israel and the West. Israel, as
the only democracy in this region surrounded by totalitarian governments, is
on the cutting edge of the challenges and dangers confronting Western
civilization everywhere.
As part of this overall effort, the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
seeks to explore how the advancement of freedom, democracy, and human rights
can be marshaled as an effective measure to secure and strengthen
international stability and security.
The Adelson Institute for Strategic
Studies also seeks to examine international law in light of the new forms of
asymmetric warfare and terror; the establishment of credible deterrence
against guerilla and terror organizations and the states that sponsor them;
the appropriate response to weapons of mass destruction; and the
strengthening of Israel's relations with its strategic allies.
Natan Sharansky, founder and chairman of the institute, is a racist Russian
Jew and Israeli politician (former deputy Prime Minister) famous for his
"tough" stance on the Palestinians.
Palestinian resistance to Zionist
domination is branded as "terrorism". Sharansky writes in Jan. 15, 2009 (Bloomberg.com)
on the ongoing Israeli slaughter in Gaza:
Terrorism is a cancer that can’t be cured through “proportional” treatments.
It requires invasive surgery.
Here follows another article on Peter Thiel and Israel
from [vc]cafe:
Peter Thiel gambles on the next internet hit
Israel’s Hooja
Peter Thiel knows a thing or two about consumer internet. After all, he’s a
PayPal cofounder, one of Facebook’s board members and its first investor
($500,000) way before its $15 billion valuation, giving him a hefty return
of a billion.
Thiel is known as a savvy investor with a ‘golden touch’ that
tends to invest small amounts early on taking a ‘hands-off’ approach with
management (learn more about his investment strategy in Thiel’s recent WSJ
profile).
Apart from Facebook, Thiel invested in some of the internet’s biggest brand
names early on, including: Yelp, Slide, LinkedIn and Friendster.These days,
Peter Thiel is managing the hedge fund Clarium Capital, which manages $2
billion under management and he’s also a partner in the Founders Fund, that
recently raised $220 million for its second fund. Now, for the first time,
Thiel is betting an Israeli tech startup, to be the next winner.
Globes reports that Thiel, along with a group of private investors, raised
$1.5 million for Hooja, an Israel-based startup founded in April of 2006 by
Naama Moran, a former Greylock Partners associate. Hooja is still operating
in stealth mode (landing page only) but its known to be developing a unique
search technology that enables content providers to search for personal and
social information in the deep web, including social networks.
One of Hooja’s investors describes the technology as ’social search’ – basically
providing higher ranking to information that a user’s friends are likely to
click on.
Other Board members
The other Board members of Facebook apart from Thiel are Mark Zuckerberg
himself, the Jewish venture capitalist Jim Breyer, and finally Marc
Andreessen.
Jim Breyer also sits in the Board of Directors of Dell, Walmart and Marvel.
Jim Breyer
Marc Andreessen is the founder of Netscape (non-Jewish?), but a man who
works closely with the Jew Ben Horowitz with whom he founded Opsware.
Andreessen has also invested in the Israeli Israel Seed Partners thus
becoming a partner of and cooperating with Jonathan Medved, one of Israel's
leading venture capitalists.
So Andreesen - Jew or not - is well entangled
in the Jewish-Israeli Internet establishment.
Ben Horowitz
In our section on Google we detailed Sheryl Sandberg, a Jewish woman who was
Google's Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations.
As Rabbi Levi Brackman and journalist Sam Jaffe write in their book "Jewish
Wisdom for Business Success", p. 2:
Early in 2008, she left Google to become the second-in-command of Facebook,
the emerging social-networking company.
The Jewish "second-in-command of Facebook" Sheryl Sandberg is presently
Chief Operating Officer. As COO, Sandberg is responsible for helping
Facebook scale its operations and expand its presence globally. Sandberg in
this position manages sales, marketing, business development, human
resources, public policy, privacy and communications and reports directly to
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
It can here be repeated that Sandberg is married to another Jew, David
Goldberg, former music head at Yahoo!.
Elliot Schrage
Another recruit from Google is the Jew Elliot Schrage, now Vice President of
Communications, Public Policy and Platform Marketing at Facebook.
In this
position he is responsible for developing and coordinating key messages
about products, corporate business and partnerships. He also oversees the
company’s public policy strategy worldwide. At Google Schrage was Vice
President of Communications and Public Affairs and in our special section on
Google we documented how he worked to promote propaganda together with the
Jewish "US Holocaust Memorial".
Another Jew who has had positions of influence in Facebook was Justin
Rosenstein, a top engineer who was one of the first employees Facebook
poached from Google, where he was a Product Manager, as Facebook began its
rise in 2007.
Both Dusty Moskovitz.and Rosenstein have since left Facebook (2008) to
jointly start Internet ventures of their own.
Ethan Beard is head of Platform at Facebook. Earlier he was Director of
Business Development. Prior to joining Facebook, he was a Director of Social
Media at Google.
Facebook and Israel
The Jewish state sees the importance in Internet Jews such as Mark Zuckeberg.
In 2008 the Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported:
Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May
by Guy Grimland
Ha'aretz Correspondent
01/04/2008
Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on
technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May
13-15.
The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon
Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli political, religious and
financial leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.
The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the
future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish
world.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference,
as will French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Vaclev
Havel, Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, and Georgia President Michael
Saakashvili
Here we see how the young Jewish entrepreneur Zuckerberg, with fellow
Internet-Jew Sergey Brin, is invited down to the Jewish state to participate
in the celebrations of Israel's 60th anniversary (which was the reason the
meeting was held) and to meet with the top Zionist echelons.
(It should here be noted that Shimon Peres is a war criminal. In 1996 he was
responsible, as the leader if the Jewish state, of Israel's massacre of over
100 Lebanese civilians in Qana.)
On March 11th, 2008, Nick O'Neill posted an interview with Mark Zuckerberg
where they touched on the subject of "anti-Semitism" and Internet:
Recently Shimon Peres suggested that Israelis and Jews worldwide use
Facebook to fight anti-semitism in addition to inviting Mark Zuckerberg to
Israel. I asked him about his thoughts on Facebook as a tool to fight anti-semitism
and if Facebook would take proactive measures to fight against it.
Mark
believes that Facebook need to focus on building useful communication tools
and that the users can use these tools to connect and generate more worldly
perspectives. As such Facebook does not need to be proactive about it.
When
asked about whether he will visit Israel next year, he said maybe.
Mark Zuckerberg (left) with fellow Jewish Facebook co-founder Dustin
Moskovitz (center)
First Facebook user has joined the IDF
A quite telling detail is that the first real user of Facebook, apart from
the co-founders, is a Jew, Arie Hasit (who carries the Facebook URL id 7).
Hasit studied with Zuckerberg in Harvard and later on did what the Jews call
Aliyah to Israel, that is he settled in occupied Palestine in accordance to
the Jewish Law of Return. Hasit has since joined the Israel Defense Forces
Spokespersons Unit, a propaganda/disinformation unit of the IDF.
The Israeli paper Ha'aretz ran a piece on Hasit and Facebook 10/05/2009
(underlines below added by Radio Islam):
Facebook founder's roommate recounts creation of Internet giant
by Guy Grimland
Ha'aretz Correspondent
Five years ago, hardly anybody had heard of Facebook. Today, it seems that
there is nobody in Israel or the world over who is not familiar with the
social networking Web site, which recently crossed the 200 million user
threshold. Facebook is estimated to be worth $15 billion after Microsoft
bought 1.6 percent stock in the company for $240 million.
Arie Hasit, 26, witnessed the birth of Facebook. He shared the same
apartment as Mark Zuckerberg, the site's founder, joined the same college
fraternity, and witnessed first-hand the company's initial climb from a
dormitory start-up to a dominant mega-monstrosity on the Web.
Hasit grew up in Philadelphia. Since he was young, he dreamed of immigrating
to Israel, which he did two years ago. Today he is serving in the Israel
Defense Forces Spokespersons Unit. He chose to enlist for a year-and-a-half
rather than the six months which are required of new immigrants in his age
bracket. Israel is not foreign to him.
"Every summer I was in Jewish summer camp in the U.S. From time to time I
would visit Israel."
After completing high school at age 18, he enrolled at Harvard University,
where he studied the history of the Land of Israel. "I thought this would
make it easier for me after I would get to Israel," Hasit said. "My parents
actually thought I should learned computers so that I would work in
high-tech when I got here."
Hasit focused his studies on the hip-hop genre in Israel, a subject which
would become the topic of his thesis. He met Mark Zuckerberg in 2002 after
they had joined the same fraternity which primarily concentrated on
activities within the Jewish community.
"We ate Shabbat dinner together," Hasit said. "Every year we raised money
for charities in Israel. Mark was one of the members of the fraternity, like
many other Jewish students at Harvard."
Hasit, who wears a skullcap, says the 25-year-old Zuckerberg feels an
affinity with Judaism. "He fasts on Yom Kippur," Hasit says of Zuckerberg.
"Sometimes he would come to the Hillel House, a Jewish organization that ran
various activities."
Hasit and Zuckerberg struck up a friendship, though they were not the
closest of friends. They later lived together in the college dorms.
"Mark just happened to live in the apartment where I lived in the dorms,"
Hasit said. "He was in one room while I was in the other. This was a large
apartment, we were seven students crammed into five bedrooms. We saw each
other every day for a number of hours. When Mark moved into the dorms I was
already in my third year while he was in his second year."
Hasit says that Zuckerberg decided one day to build a Web site that would
serve as a utility for students at Harvard. "He built the site for fun,"
Hasit says. "We had books called Face Books, which included the names and
pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a
site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females.
Visitors to the site had to choose who was 'hotter' and according to the
votes there would be a ranking."
"He only ranked people who received the most votes for being good looking,
not everybody," Hasit said. "There were about 1,000 people in all. Within
four, five hours the site became so popular that at one point it became
impossible to surf the Web on Harvard's Internet server. This was on a
Sunday in October 2003."
"The next day, the head of the university denied Zuckerberg access to the
Internet. People complained that Mark used their pictures without
permission. He apologized and ultimately the university decided not to expel
him even though there were columns in the campus newspaper that argued that
what he did was completely improper."
Zuckerberg's stunt came at a time when students were appealing to the
university to develop a Web site that would include the pictures and contact
details of students in dorms. Now they feared that the Zuckerberg episode
would compel the administration to shelve the idea.
"Mark heard these pleas and decided that if the university won't do
something about it, he will, and he would build a site that would be even
better than what the university had planned," Hasit said. "Before founding
Facebook, he built the site Course Match which allowed students to find out
who among those living in the same dorm are taking what courses, so that
they could form study groups."
Zuckerberg started developing Facebook from his modest dorm room. Every
visitor who registered at the site received a serial number. The first,
second, and third user who registered took up dummy pages. The fourth user
was Zuckerberg himself.
The fifth user is Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who also served as
the company's spokesperson. Dustin Moskovitz, the third part of the site's
founding triumvirate, occupies the sixth user spot. Moskovitz led the
technical staff at Facebook before quitting the company to found a start-up
in 2008.
Hasit's is the seventh registered user, which in practice makes him the
fourth real user to log into Facebook. "Often people ask me how I became the
fourth user. Sometimes I tell them."
"Mark came to me on the day he built Facebook, and he said to me, 'Arie, I
built this site. I want you to sign up.' And that is how I signed up to
Facebook. I put a favorite quote of mine in the profile. I specified my
favorite books, which courses I take at Harvard. I uploaded one picture to
the profile. There was no Wall. There was no News Feed. There weren't too
many things in Facebook, which only began its lifespan on the Web.
"Initially Zuckerberg asked a small group of people to sign up to Facebook.
At a certain point he told us to start inviting friends, and that is what we
did on the first and second day which the site went up on the Web. We could
only invite students enrolled at Harvard. In fact, if you did not have a
Harvard e-mail address you could not sign into Facebook.
At first, dozens of
Harvard students registered. The numbers then reached the hundreds, and by
the fourth day it had already reached the thousands. People were very
enthusiastic about the site. It enabled them to know who took what courses
and to meet new people. It conquered Harvard. In less than a week, some
4,000 students signed up for Facebook."
Hasit recalls how Zuckerberg spent hours in front of the computer.
"He
studied computers and psychology," Hasit said. "Despite the fact that he
developed Facebook, he continued his studies as per usual. His grades were
okay. He was even in a relationship with a girlfriend. During Facebook's
initial days, the walls in his room were filled with graphs and charts which
showed how many people joined on a daily basis, who used what application,
and who has the most friends."
"After a few weeks, he decided to open up Facebook to another university. He
had two friends, one at Stanford and the other at Dartmouth, whom he asked
to promote the site there. He also asked for help from his ex-girlfriend who
was a student at Dartmouth."
Facebook quickly attracted a following in other leading universities.
"Every
user specified which university he belonged to, and that was how he kept in
touch with other students at the university in which he studied, but all the
networks were under one Web site."
The graphs and charts in his room became graphs and charts which included
statistics from all the universities. At one point he received requests from
students at other universities who were not in Facebook to open the site to
them as well.
Summary
So we now know that the Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, "feels
an affinity with Judaism" and has "raised money for charities in Israel".
In Facebook's early history Zuckerberg was assisted by the Jew Dustin
Moskovitz and got funding from Jewish businessman Peter Thiel, the latter a
man with open Zionist views and in contact with the Zionist establishment.
Thiel then joined the Board of Facebook and is presently - according to The
Guardian - "the real face behind Facebook".
Other top namnes are co-Board member Jim Breyer and the Jewess Sheryl
Sandberg, the "second-in-command of Facebook".
And one of Zuckerberg's friends from Harvard - his roommate and Facebook's
first real user - has since moved to Israel and joined the Israel Defense
Forces Spokespersons Unit. This also reveals the mindset of people in
Zuckerberg's proximity.
Knowing this one is not surprised thet the arch-Zionist Shimon Peres invited
Zuckerberg to Israel in 2008.
We here give links to more information on Facebook:
-
The Guardian on the Jews behind Facebook
Guardian article that gives some idea about the people behind Facebook,
including the Jewish moneyman Peter Thiel
-
Jewish Internet Defense Force 'seizes control' of anti-Israel Facebook group
article from The Jerusalem Post
Wikipedia
What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is an Internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit and add
information.
Wikipedia claims its articles are based on a "neutral point of view" but as
it is human beings writing the articles, of course the contents quickly have
been mixed up with politics. For instance organization like CIA have tried
to affect the entries (see BBC's "Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits' "), and
big companies try to control the information on themselves. And Israel and
its army of "cyber-soldier" Jews from all over the world are now doing the
same...
The Wikipedia project has ended into control of student research on the
Internet.
The situation is now that the majority of subjects Googled will show
Wikipedia as the top - or one of the first top results - and thus Wikipedia
will get the majority of the hits.
And as shown in our section on Google this Internet search-engine is well in
the hands of Zionist Jews and also cooperates openly with Zionist
organizations such as ADL and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to
control the searches and censoring information and certain sites.
This means that apart from Wikipedia other sites may be censored when
Googling any given subject.
Larry Sanger
Wikipedia's Jewish founders - Wales and Sanger
From all the available information it appears Wikipedia was started by two
Jews, one a programmer, and the other an 'Adult Site' operator.
The origins are in a project called Nupedia launched in March 2000 by Jimmy
Wales and Larry Sanger.
The Jew Jimmy Wales (actually James Wales, or also known as "Jimbo"), with
riches from his time as an options trader, became an Internet entrepreneur
and decided to create a free, online encyclopedia. He recruited the Jew
Larry Sanger, who was finishing a Ph.D. in philosophy at the Ohio State
University - whom Wales knew from their joint participation in online
mailing lists and Usenet discussion groups - to become the paid editor in
chief.
Wales’s company Bomis, an Internet search portal and a vendor of
online “erotic images” (featuring the Bomis Babe Report), picked up the tab
initially.
The Jewish computer programmer Ben Kovitz is the one who suggested to Larry
Sanger, Nupedia's editor-in-chief, to transfer the online encyclopedia to a
wiki support. Larry and Jimmy Wales accepted and from that time, Wikipedia
took over Nupedia and became a huge success.
Larry Sanger, one of the two recognized cofounders, is openly Jewish. In
their rabblings of what different famous Jews are doing The Jewish Chronicle
mentions Sanger in an article "Larry Sanger... creates a new Wikipedia", The
Jewish Chronicle, 26 October 2006, p. 10.
Wales is presently in charge. Sanger left in 2002, and is a
professor/lecturer at Ohio State.
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales History
Jimmy Wales is the de facto leader of Wikipedia and as thus wields a lot of
influence. Time Magazine named him in its 2006 list of the world's most
influential people.
Short history: Wales who was born in Huntsville, Alabama, went to the
exclusive Randolph prep school, and onto the University of Alabama. Wales
graduated and became a Futures Trader in Chicago. Next he opened Bomis, an
'Adult Content' website, which was followed by Nupedia, which morphed into
Wikipedia.
Wales is the darling of the Jewish crowd at Harvard, being a fellow at the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at the Harvard Law School.
What is Bomis.Com?
Basically 'Bomis' is an adult site, started by Wales.
The website featured user-generated webrings and that, according to The
Atlantic Monthly (September 2006),
"found itself positioned as the Playboy
of the Internet".
For a time the company sold erotic photographs, and Wales
described the site as a "guy-oriented search engine".
Jimmy Wales with Bomis babes
a Bomis babe - financing Wikipedia
Jewish employees
Names like Jeremy Rosenfeld (a Bomis employee), Benjamin Kovitz, Seth Cohen,
dot the landscape of technical staff.
Wales' editing interventions
It should here be noted that although Wikipedia states that it professes a
"neutral point of view" the on-line dictionary has even seen direct
interventions from its owner Jimmy Wales over its contents. The Herald Sun
reports June 30, 2009, in the article "Wikipedia edits helped free David
Rohde":
THE New York Times worked with Wikipedia to keep news of the kidnapping of
one of its reporters in Afghanistan off the online user-edited encyclopedia.
New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped by the Taliban in
November, escaped from his captors along with his translator this month.
A number of news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, at the
request of the New York Times, agreed not to report the kidnapping out of
concerns for their safety.
Keeping the news off Wikipedia was another matter, the Times said.
It said that on at least a dozen occasions, user-editors posted news of the
abduction on a Wikipedia page about Mr.. Rohde, only to have it erased.
Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing, it said.
"The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of
Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at the Times,''
the newspaper said.
"We were really helped by the fact that it hadn't appeared in a place we
would regard as a reliable source,'' Mr.. Wales told the Times.
"I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.''
The Times said that two days after the November 10 kidnapping, Michael Moss,
an investigative reporter at the Times and friend of Mr. Rohde, altered Mr.
Rohde's Wikipedia entry to emphasize that his work could be seen as
sympathetic to Muslims, like his reporting on Guantanamo and his coverage of
the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims.
It said that the next day, an unidentified user, citing an Afghan news
agency report, edited the entry on Mr. Rohde and mentioned the kidnapping.
Mr. Moss deleted the mention, and the user promptly restored it, adding a
note protesting the removal, the Times said.
It said the Times eventually reached out to Wales and Wikipedia put an
indefinite block and then a temporary freeze on changes to the page.
"We had no idea who it was,'' Mr.. Wales said of the unidentified user making
the edits.
He said there was no indication the user had ill-intent.
The Times said Mr.. Wales himself unfroze the page after the June 19 escape by
Mr. Rohde and his interpreter, Tahir Ludin.
Interesting here is to see that people should be kept in the dark of the
"security deterioration" and the realities of what is happening in occupied
Afghanistan. Instead Wikipedia will help in sanitizing the image.
Wikimedia Director Sue Gardner in Israel 2009
Wikipedia chief Gardner goes to Israel - gets advice
Israeli paper Ha'aretz reports 04/05/2009 on how Sue Gardner, Executive
Director of the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia, has participated
at a meeting in Israel - a Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference - organized by
Wikimedia's Israeli supporters and Tel Aviv University's Netvision Institute
for Internet Studies.
Ha'aretz writes:
Wikipedia editors: Coverage of Israel 'problematic'
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Wikipedia's coverage of Israel-related issues is "problematic," leading
Israeli internet researchers claimed Sunday at the Wikipedia Academy 2009
Conference dealing with the world's largest encyclopedia. The conference was
organized by Wikimedia's volunteer-based Israel chapter and Tel Aviv
University's Netvision Institute for Internet Studies. However, the Web
site's leading manager said it merely reflected public discourse.
In demonstrating what he defined as problems, Eli Hacohen, the Institute's
director, showed how Hamas is not defined as a terrorist organization in the
first paragraph describing the organization on the English site of the
reader-edited online encyclopedia, which is the world's fourth most popular
Web site.
Hacohen also documented his attempts to define Iran's president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, as a Holocaust-denier. Each time he included his remarks on
Wikipedia, users and editors removed the reference - despite Ahmadinejad's
frequent and public Holocaust denials.
On a related entry, Hacohen also noted that Wikipedia defines David Irving -
a known Holocaust denier - as a historian, although his credentials are
recognized by no one but himself. Furthermore, the Wikipedia entry on
January's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza describes it as an "intense
bombardment" by Israel on a civilian population.
Dror Kamir, a leading Israeli Wikipedia promoter, showed how Lod is not
listed as a city in Israel in Wikipedia's Arabic-language version.
Also attending the conference, which discussed Wikipedia's role in academia,
was Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which
runs Wikipedia. Gardner told Haaretz that she is "quite comfortable" with
the mistakes on the Web site. "I know that more or less the same mistakes
can be found in the New York Times," she explained.
Before her address at the conference, she defined Wikipedia as a "just
another mainstream news medium." Wikipedia, Gardner said, "will never say
anything as Wikipedia. It will only quote relatively well-respected sources,
including other media. So it's natural for Wikipedia to reflect public
discourse as it fluctuates, and news is the first draft of history."
On her first visit to Israel, Gardner explained that her attitude stemmed
from her framework of reference as a journalist in her native Canada,
including a stint as director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Web
site.
The boss of Wikipedia thus travels down to the land of the chosen people to
be lectured on how Wikipedia can be improved when it divulges information
concerning Israel/Jews.
For a collection of images from this event between Wikipedia and Israel,
see here.
Sue Gardner in Israel 2009, Eli Hacohen to the right
Wikipedia leading editor also goes to Israel
David Shankbone, leading editor at Wikipedia, has been invited by the
Israeli Government's Foreign Ministry to help polish Israel's image:
Photo Editing Israel’s Online Image
by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer
The Jewish Week
03/04/2009
[...]
But David Saranga, the media consul for the Consulate General of Israel in
New York, plans to fight back. After launching a pro-Israel campaign through
Twitter.com during the Gaza war and by bringing Maxim magazine into Israel
last year, he says he is recruiting the best in the business to revamp
Israel’s online image.
In just a few weeks, he will bring six American new media experts to
photograph Israel, with funds from the Consulate and Israel’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
[...]
However, Saranga says the initiative will, hopefully, knock the pictures of
destruction much further down the lists, behind photos of ordinary Israeli
daily life. And because he has enlisted Internet authorities like pen-named
Wikipedia senior editor David Shankbone, Saranga thinks that there is a good
chance they’ll stay that way.
Shankbone - whose real name is David Miller
- first visited Israel in
December 2007, when Saranga led a group of journalists on a tour of the
country’s high-tech and environmental developments. All in all Shankbone
estimates that he illustrates over 4,000 Wikipedia articles with his
photography.
“The idea is to create a body of work that not only Wikipedia can use but
that the general public can use,” he said.
Shankbone is not Jewish, but he said he learned extensively about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict in school. While he considers himself a
supporter of Israel, Shankbone doesn’t intend to make Wikipedia a Zionist
Web site, and he looks at the Gaza war as a black-and-white situation
-
Israel had a right to respond, but its mode of attack was not without fault.
Yet for Shankbone, the purpose of his photo expedition is not to document
the aftermath of the war.
“People want to talk to you about other things than just missiles,” he said.
Ideally, Shankbone said he’d like to end up at solar power plants in the
Negev Desert or in a southern city like Eilat, because he spent most of his
time up north during the previous trip.
“I particularly like small towns, because my feeling is that anyone can come
to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,” Shankbone said.
While on open-source sites, users can add and remove other people’s
contributions as they see fit, only an administrator can permanently delete
the posts from the storage database, Wikimedia Commons. In his three years
working as a Wikipedia editor, however, Shankbone said that he has been
careful to avoid inserting his own political positions, and readers have
rarely altered his content. His collection remains the largest Creative
Commons - a Web-based data-sharing platform - photograph community generated
by one person, he said.
[...]
Critic Oboler, however, questions whether “bringing out people like
Shankbone will help directly with the grass-roots, anti-Israel and often
anti-Semitic activity that occurs online.”
“What it will do is help in the fight for hearts and minds online,” he said.
“This proactive engagement is also important.”
“It certainly isn’t going to be the silver bullet,” Shankbone agreed. “It
does give Wikipedia the opportunity or responsibility to present accuracy.”
And while Saranga hopes to change the world’s perception of Israel in the
long term with the support of every American Israel consulate, he recognizes
that, realistically, results will not be immediate.
“At the end of the day, a single activity won’t change perceptions; a single
activity won’t change the criticism generated by the Gaza war,” he said.
“But what is important is to create a critical mass of positive activities
that will improve Israel’s image.”
The Jerusalem Post writes on the same story:
Leading Wikipedia editor to visit Israel
by Herb Keinon
The Jerusalem Post
Dec 8, 2007
In an acknowledgement of the importance that the Internet encyclopedia
Wikipedia has in shaping opinion, the Foreign Ministry is bringing one of
its leading editors, David Shankbone, to Israel next week.
World According to a communiqué put out by the ministry, Shankbone has
carried out dozens of interviews of US personalities for Wikipedia,
including presidential candidates, religious leaders, rock stars and
journalists. Shankbone will be visiting within the framework of a delegation
of technology writers being brought to Israel by the Foreign Ministry and
the America-Israel Friendship League.
Explaining the rationale for bringing Shankbone to Israel, David Saranga,
the spokesman at the consulate in New York, said: "More than once we have
faced editors connected to Israel that appear on Wikipedia in English that
do not represent the reality in Israel. We decided to initiate a visit by
Shankbone to describe Israeli reality as it is."
Wikipedia, according to the Foreign Ministry, is the eighth largest web site
in the world, with some 60 million visitors a day, or some 14,000 hits a
second.
David Shankbone - whose real name is David
Miller - has himself written on his trip in
his private user page in Wikipedia:
Israel
I went to Israel to expand Wikipedia's quality photographic representation
and coverage of Israeli-related articles.
My trip was reported on in their
press:
I also wrote a series of articles about the trip for Wikinews. I interviewed
their President, Shimon Peres, had lunch with the President of the Technion
and discussed the philosophy of Wikipedia over dinner with Yossi Vardi. Here
is the first one.
And if you have a chance - check out Solar power in Israel, which I recently
wrote.
Below is a gallery of images I took on the trip.
And here is a nice picture of Shankbone-Miller with Shimon Peres:
Wikipedia's David Shankbone (Miller) with Israeli war criminal
Shimon Peres
- the man behind the
Qana massacre of over 100 Lebanese civilians in 1996
Shankbone's interview with Peres appeared in the Israeli paper Yedioth
Aharonoth (here part of the article, reproduced from
the Israeli government site):
WikiPeres
by Itamar Eichner
Yedioth Aharonoth
24 December 2007, p.12
A President with Value: Peres is the First Leader to Be Interviewed for
Wikipedia’s News Site
The nation’s president proved again yesterday that despite his advanced age
he has no need to be embarrassed facing politicians much younger than he.
Shimon Peres is the first world leader to grant an interview to the online
encyclopedia Wikipedia.
The interview with Peres will be published on the Wikipedia news site,
Wikinews and his statements will be integrated into various articles
throughout the encyclopedia.
For over an hour, Peres sat with one of the Wikipedia senior editors, David
Shankbone. Shankbone, who came to Israel with a delegation of journalists,
turned to the Israeli Consul for Media and Public Affairs in New York, David
Saranga, and asked to schedule an interview with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and President Peres.
To Shankbone’s surprise, it was Peres who decided to
take up the gauntlet and grant an interview to the popular encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is the eighth most-popular website in the world in terms of daily
traffic.
At the outset of the interview, Shankbone told Peres,
“We checked among
Internet surfers under age 30 and we found that you are the most popular and
most recognizable leader in the world.”
Peres used the interview for a bitter attack on Iran.
“The Iranian economy
cannot support the atomic program,” he said, “and the world must decide if
it is ready for nuclear weapons to fall into terrorists’ hands.”
Peres was asked his opinion of the younger generation of Israelis.
“The 14-
15- and 16-year-olds need to participate in determining the world’s future,”
the President explained. “If it were up to adults, they would want kids to
keep dancing the hora or singing Slavic songs, but youngsters don’t listen
and should not have to. Young women today also wear more risqué clothing
than they did in the past and there is no problem with that since they look
nicer.”
Consul Saranga said last night,
“It was important for the Foreign
Ministry that part of the interview was dedicated to subjects other than the
conflict [with the Palestinians].”
The interview has since appeared in Wikinews - "the free news source" - as
it was destined to be, and can be read at:
Shankbone-Miller to return to Israel
In his own blog 2008/07/31 Shankbone-Miller
writes that he will return to Israel:
David Shankbone to go back to Israel for Wikimedia
by David Shankbone
Last December I traveled to Israel where I had lunch with Yitzhak Apeloig,
the president of their premiere university, the Technion, and interviewed
their President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres (photo, right).
In the next few months I will be returning to the Holy Land for a week-long
photography expedition. From the students of Haifa to the dolphins of Eilat;
from the vineyards of the Galillee to the Bedouins of The Negev; I will
engage in a photographic documentary of the people and landscape of Israel.
The goal is to create a comprehensive body of images of the country that are
licensed as free content, meaning my work will be available to everyone via
Wikimedia for both commercial and non-commercial uses.
Watch this blog for updates.
In his own blog 2009/03/04 Shankbone
writes more on his new Israel trip,
where he will be joined by,
"baroness of social media, Tamar Weinberg, and
her photographer husband".
"Consul David Saranga in the Israeli
Foreign Ministry [...] was instrumental in putting the trip together":
My Israel trip covered in Jewish Week
by David Shankbone
Sharon Udasin recently wrote in Jewish Week about my upcoming photography
expedition of Israel for the creative commons.
Also on the plane will be the
baroness of social media, Tamar Weinberg, and her photographer husband. The
itinerary is not set, but I have requested an interview for Wikinews.
Because the focus is on photography, most of my writing will take place on
this blog where I hope to document the experience. Consul David Saranga in
the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who has spear-headed his country’s foray into
social media, was instrumental in putting the trip together.
My goal here will be to document not just the monuments and public
structures that every tourist documents, but also common, every-day features
of life and landscape. Cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are not crying out
for free media (although they can always use more professional-quality
shots). Instead, places like the Arava Valley, the kiryats and the kibbutzes
need coverage.
I want to capture life outside the scope of a rifle. That not every Israeli
is armed, living in rubble or dodging missiles is lost in a media narrative
that filters everything through conflict. The hope is to obtain shots of the
country not typically obtained by tourists and photojournalists.
Small town
and rural Israel holds all the appeal for me.
More tricks to control information in Wikipedia
But corrupting the very top names of Wikipedia for Israel's cause is not
enough. Jewish students, paid by Hasbara fellowships from the Israeli
government, are mobilized to edit Wikipedia in a pro-Israel manner.
The images and text below are from a Hasbara newsletter dated May 2007.
Hasbara is an Israeli institution that gives fellowships to Jewish students
around the world and also aids them in organizing "Israel Advocacy", i.e.
Israel-propaganda.
We also recommend reading the following articles:
-
Jimmy Wales counting the bucks
A pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia
-
CAMERA orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular
online encyclopedia
Wikipedia joins the "censor game"
-
example on how Jewish Internet activists work to delete information they
dislike
Online Censorship by Israel - What do BLOGGER, YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK,
-
and WIKIPEDIA have in common? - external link
by Irish4Palestine, 21/02/2009
-
Foreign Ministry out to "conquer" internet
article from Israeli YNet site on a Israeli government photo offensive on
Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr
-
Photo Editing Israel’s Online Image
Israel's government invites Wikipedia editor Shankbone to help with pro-Israelization
of Wikipedia
Yahoo!
Yahoo! in Jewish hands
The Jew Terry Semel was CEO of the search engine company Yahoo! between 2001
and 2007.
During his time as Yahoo! CEO Semel used his position to impress on his
fellow Jews.
Yahoo Jew Terry Semel
For instance Semel in the shape of Yahoo-boss
appeared as one
of the main speakers at the Jewish Community Federation in San
Francisco's meeting, January 25, 2006, according to the organization's
homepage:
300 JCF donors gathered at the Julia Morgan Ballroom to
kibbutz and build a
Jewish network of business professionals. Featured speaker Yahoo! CEO Terry
Semel gave an engaging, personal talk, sharing his views on philanthropy and
leadership.
Terry Semel speaks at Jewish Community Federation in San
Francisco
The Jewish site Jweekly.com writes on the event:
Yahoo CEO talks of philanthropy, teamwork at JCF event
Friday, February 17, 2006
by Maureen Earl, correspondent
With more than 420 million users around the world, Yahoo can claim a high
spot on the Internet echelon. But it wasn't always smooth sailing for the
Sunnyvale-based company.
When Yahoo's chairman and CEO, Jewish Brooklyn native Terry Semel, first
arrived at the company in 2001, it had just lost $98 million on revenue of
$717 million. Semel was determined to put Yahoo back in the black.
His strategy worked. Last year Yahoo earned $1.2 billion on sales of $5.3
billion - and those 420 million users aren't bad, either.
On Jan. 25 Semel addressed 300 donors to the S.F.-based Jewish Community
Federation who gathered for the JCF's first Business Leadership Council
breakfast.
Semel, once one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood and now one of the
most commanding leaders in Internet technology, started the keynote address
by announcing that he was not a morning person.
"I prefer to take an hour to reflect and catch up in the morning," he said.
Soft-spoken but authoritative, Semel discussed the importance of
philanthropy in business.
"Business and philanthropy go hand in hand," he
said. "I came from a lower-income family in Brooklyn, yet by the age of 10
or 12 I'd already been taught the importance of giving.
"You need to start kids off that young so that it becomes a habit. To
accomplish things you also have to give. At first maybe with time, then
later with money, and eventually even both if you are able."At the age of 10
it was a dollar from his allowance; today, Semel no longer thinks on a small
scale.
"I now think in terms of hundreds of millions," he said, "but the same
principles apply whether it's a two-person philanthropy organization or a
giant like Yahoo."
Tikkun olam, repairing the world, is how Semel operates both in philanthropy
and business.
He recalled how, as an ambitious young man working as a sales
trainee at Warner Bros. in the mid-1960s, his boss would arrive shouting and
yelling at all and sundry.
"There and then I decided I would not do that. How people are treated is
vital."
Semel, who graduated in 1964 with an accounting degree from Long Island
University, went on to become chairman and CEO of Warner Bros.
During his
24-year career there, Semel and his business partner, Robert Daly, helped
shape the company into one of the world's largest media outlets, generating
nearly $11 billion in total revenue from businesses in 50 countries.
In 1999, Semel and Daly pressed their hands into wet concrete outside
Hollywood's legendary Mann's Chinese Theater. With the executives thus
immortalized in Hollywood lore, the ceremony marked the last day of work for
the two at Warner Bros.
In May 2001, after an 18-month hiatus, Semel joined Yahoo as CEO and
chairman immediately after the dot-com collapse in Silicon Valley.
"I was looking for a challenge. I didn't take the position for the money,"
he said.
Whether he was looking for it or not, Semel has netted $403 million by
exercising Yahoo options and selling shares. He still owns shares and
options worth more than $230 million.
The credit of Yahoo's success, Semel said, goes to his staff and their
practiced team ability.
"It's always about team. No one wins if it rests on one star athlete. The
superstar ideal will not get you to the Super Bowl, it's not sustainable. It
has to be the team. And we [at Yahoo] actually like each other - we love the
challenge."
Last year Yahoo added 220 people a month and now employs about 10,000.
Daniel Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer, said,
"Terry's a Brooklynite at heart. He expects a new fight every day."
One of the biggest challenges Semel faces is adapting the company to fit its
users' ever-changing preferences.
"The big change in technology is that we used to have someone else program
everything for us," he said. "Someone else programmed television, so you
watched what was on when it was on. Internet has turned the user into
programmers - we want what we want, when we want, and we get it."
On Friday evenings, Semel boards his private jet in Sunnyvale and returns to
his family and home in Bel Air for the weekend.
There he is able to relax
for a couple of days knowing that he has helped grow Yahoo into a company
that has the widest global reach of any Internet site.
Not shabby for a man who, prior to joining Yahoo, had rarely gone near a
computer.
Semel may constantly redirect attention to his team, but he is very much an
individual. "I would not have succeeded had I not been true to myself. I
never wanted to be the guy who looks back and says 'I wish I'd done this,
done that,'" he said.
Summing up Semel's pre-Yahoo! career
Prior to Yahoo! - as stated in the article above - Semel worked in Hollywood
where he spent 24 years at Warner Bros.
As its chairman and co-chief
executive officer, Semel and his partner built the company into one of the
world’s largest entertainment enterprises. Prior to Warner Bros., Semel was
in charge of Walt Disney's Theatrical Distribution division and he has also
been in charge of CBS’ Theatrical Distribution division.
Terry Semel is a friend of Arnon Milchan, the Jewish Hollywood producer with
Mossad connections, and was one of the invited att Milchan's Israel party
2008, a party co-organized by the Israeli consulate (The Jewish Journal,
September 25, 2008).
Other Yahoo! Jews
The Israeli Jew Andrei Broder, a graduate from Israel's Technion Institute,
is Vice President for Search & Computational Advertising at Yahoo! Research.
Broder also serves as Chief Scientist of Yahoo’s Advertising Technology
Group. He has previously worked for AltaVista as the Vice President of
research and for IBM Research as a Distinguished Engineer and CTO of IBM's
Institute for Search and Text Analysis.
David Goldberg was Vice President and General Manager of Music at Yahoo!
Inc., since the acquisition of LAUNCH Media, Inc. by Yahoo! in August 2001.
David Goldberg is married to and has kids with Sheryl Sandberg, the Jewish
Internet boss formerly with Google and presently "second-in-command" in
Facebook (see our long entry on her in our Google section).
Goldberg left Yahoo! in 2007.
The Israeli engineer Udi Manber, also a graduate from the Israeli Technion
Institute and who we portray in more depth in our section on Google, was
chief scientist at Yahoo! from 1998 to 2002. Manber then joined Amazon.com
where he became "chief algorithms officer" and a Vice President. He was
later appointed CEO of the Amazon subsidiary company A9.com, where he led
the company's A9 search engine work.
In 2006, he was hired by Google as one
of their Vice Presidents of engineering.
Andrei Broder
David Goldberg
Udi Manber
Yahoo! and Israel
Semel was in Israel during the festive events 2008, celebrating Israel's
60th anniversary.
Semel appeared as a speaker on Shimon Peres’ “President’s
Conference” in Israel May 15, on the topic "The Revolution of the Internet
and the new media", together with Google's Jewish co-founder and President
Sergey Brin. Semel was here to represent his post-Yahoo! company Windsor
Media, where he is chairman and CEO.
Susan Decker, the present President of Yahoo! Inc., also attended and spoke
at the 2008 Israel conference. Decker is the person that took over the
Presidency over Yahoo! directly after Semel.
The Israeli paper Ha'aretz writes:
Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May
by Guy Grimland
Ha'aretz Correspondent
01/04/2008
Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on
technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May
13-15.
The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon
Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli political, religious and
financial leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.
The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the
future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish
world.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference,
as will French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Vaclev
Havel, Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, and Georgia President Michael
Saakashvili
Other Zionist participants at the meeting were Rupert Murdoch and Maurice
Levy, the latter a powerful French Jew with enormous might in the
advertisement/publicity business (Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi), and a man
very dedicated to promoting Israel's image.
The meeting was moderated by Israel's "technology guru" Yossi Vardi, whom
Yahoo! already had business dealings with (see below).
The “President’s Conference” figured other speeches by staunch Zionists such
as Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and "American" agents of Israel
such as Dennis Ross and Henry Kissinger.
And the collaboration between Yahoo! and Israel deepens
Here follows three Ha'aretz articles on the subject:
Yahoo! President Susan Decker takes interest in Israel
by Haaretz Staff and Channel 10
May 18, 2008
Susan Decker, the president of Yahoo! Incorporated, visited Jerusalem last
week to attend the 2008 Presidential Conference.
Decker oversees one of the most popular Web sites in the world, with more
than 400 million page views daily. She is the second highest paid female
executive in the United States, with 14,000 people working under her.
Decker suggests that Yahoo! exemplifies the fact that the glass ceiling she
was spared is a thing of the past.
Internet giant Yahoo! to follow rivals Google, Microsoft to Israel
by Raz Smolsky and Maayan Cohen
Ha'aretz
14/01/2008
Internet giant Yahoo! is coming to Israel, and not only over the Net.
The
company is taking its battle for survival against Google and Microsoft to
Israel on two levels. It will open a research and development center in
Haifa, and will also enter the content side of the business here for the
first time through a cooperation agreement with Walla!, which is partly
owned by Haaretz.
Yahoo! is following Google, which set up R&D centers in Tel Aviv and Haifa,
as well as establishing a marketing center that also deals in joint content
arrangements with Israeli portals. Microsoft, meanwhile, has set up a sales
and marketing branch in Ra'anana, as well as R&D centers in Tel Aviv and
Herzliya.
Yahoo! is now negotiating office space in the Matam high-tech park in Haifa;
and is expected to open its research center within a few months.
Google kicked off in the Middle East with its Haifa R&D center in July 2006,
despite the Second Lebanon War at the time; the center was its first in the
region and only its fourth outside of the U.S. Other well-known companies in
the Matam industrial park include Intel, Microsoft, Elbit and Zim.
Yahoo!'s first foray into the Israeli content market is based on a strategic
deal signed with portal Walla!. The goal is to threaten Google's hegemony in
the Israeli search market for the first time and the real challenge is to
compete in search-based advertising.
Under the long-term deal signed between Yahoo! and Walla!, the technology
and databases will come from Yahoo!, but the search engine will be branded
as Walla! Search, the name of Walla!'s present engine.
Only six months ago there were reports that Walla! was negotiating with
Google in the search market, but no agreement was ever reached. Google
usually partners with a local search engine by providing the technology and
the advertisements, while the revenues are split.
The joint Walla!-Yahoo! venture will continue using Walla!'s AdVantage
platform. This will allow Walla! to continue to manage the advertising
itself, and it will receive a higher percentage of the revenues than in a
deal that also included advertising, such as Google proposed.
According to Walla! CEO Ilan Yeshua:
"The search and advertising in search
results sector is one of the fastest growing in the world, and also in
Israel. The agreement with Yahoo! allows us to offer Walla!'s surfers an
excellent search product... for the Israeli user. The agreement will help
Walla! increase its market share in the search-based advertising market.
The
existence of another strong player in the search and textual advertising
sector will contribute to competitiveness , both in the search experience
and in the range of possibilities available to advertisers."
Yahoo! and Walla! had previously discussed technological cooperation in the
past, but nothing serious came of it. Walla!'s previous management, replaced
in 2006, was never willing to allow outsiders to share its advertising
revenues.
Israeli Internet advertising was estimated at $90 million in 2007, 10% of
the total advertising pie. Of this figure, search engine advertising took
about half, $40-50 million, the large majority of which went to Google.
Yahoo buys no-sales FoxyTunes for $40m
by Guy Griml
Ha'aretz
February 05, 2008
Yahoo, the Internet giant that Microsoft wants to take over, is gearing up
for its second Israeli investment: FoxyTunes, owned by entrepreneurs Vitaly
and Alex Sirota. The exact amount has not been announced, but sources close
to the situation say the company will go for between $30 million and $40
million.
The Sirota brothers, new immigrants from Russia, are the big winners in the
deal, along with Yossi Vardi and a group of private investors from the
United States. Initial investment in the company is estimated at just a few
million, and the brothers will be raking in a total of $15 million.
[...]
"We will become part of Yahoo Entertainment, and they will distribute the
FoxyTunes toolbar to as many people as possible."
More on Jewish Internet actor Semel...
Semel is currently on the Board of Directors of Polo Ralph Lauren
Corporation, Emerson College, and the Guggenheim Museum.
But he still
continues his favorite pastime, which he describes in a Hebrew-language
interview in the Israeli The Globe, as:
I’m busy mostly with in searching for interesting companies in order to
purchase and invest in, and I’m certain that they’ll be heard of in the
coming years.
Terry's daughter Courtenay Semel is also in the spotlight.
The Jewish site Jewtastic writes:
Semel Reveals She Was Lohan’s First Jewish Gay Lover
by Jewtastic Staff
August 18th, 2008
Lindsay Lohan embarked on a secret lesbian affair with aspiring actress
Courtenay Semel before meeting [Jewish] Samantha Ronson, it has been
claimed.
Semel - the daughter of former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel - insists she was the
Mean Girls star’s first gay love.
But she claims they kept their affair secret because of the actress’ fear of
coming out to the world.
She said:
“Everyone thinks Samantha is Lindsay’s first lesbian love, but we
were very passionate until her fear of being found out drove us apart. At
the time she was terrified her career would be over if she revealed her
sexual tendencies. But then Samantha came on to the scene and I was
dropped.”
Terry Semel doing the classic "palms-out" pose
MySpace
MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted
network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and
videos for teenagers and adults internationally.
Jewish co-founders and President
The MySpace project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder,
Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh
Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting President), and a team of
programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.
Known Jews in this lot are Anderson, Greenspan and Berman.
As one Jewish blogger writes:
The website was co-founded by Tom Anderson. Although Tom’s last name
reflects his father’s Scottish heritage, he and his mother are Jewish and he
was raised in a messianic Jewish household.
Josh Berman, the other Jewish co-founder of MySpace.com, also served as the
company's Chief Operating Officer.
President Tom Anderson (right) and Chris DeWolfe (left)
Jewish Vice Presidents including an Israeli paratrooper (reserves)
Another Jew, Richard Rosenblatt, was former Chairman of MySpace and thus
earned the title the "MySpace guru".
The Jew Travis Katz is presently the international head of MySpace and a
senior Vice President (2009).
Richard Rosenblatt
Travis Katz
Josh Brooks
Among other names as senior Vice Presidents we have Shawn Gold, the Israeli
Nimrod Lev (former Israeli paratroopers and military intelligence) and Josh
Brooks.
Whether Steve Pearman also is Jewish, we don't know.
Another Jew - with political insights - is Jeff Berman who joined MySpace in
2006 as Senior Vice President of Public Affairs. In 2007, Berman was
promoted to General Manager of MySpaceTV (http://myspacetv.com), where he
oversaw the launch of the company's global video platform. There he
cooperated with media Jews Michael Eisner, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward
Zwick.
In 2008 Berman was appointed Executive Vice President of Marketing
and Content of MySpace, responsible for spearheading the development and
implementation of marketing initiatives and campaigns for MySpace's more
than 110 million users worldwide. Berman will thus report to MySpace's CEO
and co-founder Chris DeWolfe.
Before joining MySpace, from 2001-2005, Berman served as Chief Counsel to
the Jewish U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and Staff Director of the Subcommittee
on Administrative Oversight and the Courts.
Jeff Berman
MySpace Jew with political insights
MySpace, and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed Intermix Media) was
bought in July 2005 for US$ 580 million by arch-Zionist Rupert Murdoch's
News Corporation.
Murdoch is a fanatic pro-Israeli. In the Jewish magazine 15 Minutes, Issue
26, July 1, 2001, one could read:
[Murdoch] explained at a Museum of Jewish Heritage dinner at the
Waldorf-Astoria that,
"I have always believed in the future of Israel and
the goals of the international Jewish community".
MySpace and Israel
The Israeli paper Ha'aretz writes, January 09, 2007:
Hey, Israeli startups - MySpace wants you
by Lior Haner
Even though most Israeli entrepreneurs say they want to develop their
startups into large companies, most secretly wish for generous purchase
offers from abroad - and may even prefer working as senior vice presidents
in an American corporation.
Both of these wishes were granted to Israeli Internet serial entrepreneur
Nimrod Lev, 35, who founded KSolo in 2005, sold it last summer to Fox
Interactive Media and now works as a senior vice president at Fox.
Fox Interactive is owned by the media conglomerate News Corp., and owns the
popular MySpace Internet Web site. Lev is currently on a personal trip to
Israel, and will be speaking at the Israel Management Center's convention
this coming Sunday, January 7, where participants will choose the 2006
high-tech CEO of the year.
Haner's current visit is his first to Israel since selling KSolo and he does
not hide his intentions to find more Israeli Internet entrepreneurs for
Fox's acquisitions department. "If there is a company can benefit FOx's
MySpace, I would rather find it in Israel than elsewhere," explains Lev.
Despite his Israeli background and the fact that there are other Israelis
who could assist companies in penetrating the American market, Lev insists
that due to the cultural gaps and problems in understanding one another, any
company that wants to succeed overseas needs a local presence.
This week Lev hopes to meet with representatives of several Israeli
companies whose products are in their initial stages, to form ties between
them and Fox. Lev believes that the next big high-tech field combines the
Internet and cellular services, but he has not revealed which Israeli
companies he thinks have the best potential, or with whom he is meeting. In
the meantime, he has been heaping praises on the more established and
familiar Internet companies, such as Jajah, Oberon Media and Quigo
Technologies.
He also feels the biggest underachieving company in recent years is Babylon,
the interactive dictionary developer, which Lev says could have been much
more successful.
During his visit, Lev will share his experience and relate
the story of his ascent to the upper echelons of the American Internet
industry.
Lev started out as an editor at the Israeli Internet portal Walla in 1996, a
job he landed after editing the student newspaper at Tel Aviv's College of
Management.
Firing Cupid's arrow
In 1999 Lev left Walla to join Zion Madmon, the founder of cupid.co.il, to
help promote that company and develop it abroad, thus beginning his journey
to American Internet.
"We established JCupid, which joined forces with JDate," recalls Lev. "In
2004, Cupid was sold to Spark Networks, which operates JDate. That was my
first exit and I immediately started looking for my next project and
remained in the United States. The next thing turned out to be KSolo."
KSolo, run by the Israeli developers of Cupid and headed by Lev in New York,
is a site for karaoke singing and recording.
Lev says that his secret to success is not developing something that he
thinks users want, but something that users need. The product does not have
to be connected to the success of other sites or the entrepreneur's personal
background.
"I was no longer a bachelor when I began matchmaking on the Web and had no
connection to karaoke when I founded KSolo, but it seemed to me like a
necessary product. One does not always have to invent the wheel. One can
take something that works well in the real world and adapt it for the
Internet. This was the case with the two companies I founded," he says.
"At KSolo, we signed an agreement with all the major copyright holders of
the songs in America and share the revenues with them," Lev adds, adding
that in the Internet era, content has so far been considered the main thing.
"One has to understand that in the past two years, the user has become the
focal point," continues Lev, "and it is the users who control the content."
Lev's path to the Fox deal began like that of many Internet entrepreneurs,
with a fund-raising campaign by private investors.
"The investors were American," relates Lev. "It is easier to raise money in
the U.S. It depends on the project, but usually Israelis find it harder to
spend money. It is something in their blood. Israeli market evaluations are
lower, because Israelis were burned more severely by the bursting of the
high-tech bubble.
Since the American Internet market was much more advanced,
many companies had already had exits, while in Israel, the industry
collapsed a moment before companies closed deals, and the sting of the
previous experience affects investors' decisions to this day."
In the summer of 2006, about a year after KSolo went on the air, Lev
received a telephone call from, Tom Andersen, one of Fox's senior
executives, who is also the president of MySpace.
He had discovered a
karaoke recording by a KSolo user on the user's personal site at MySpace.
"The negotiations [with Fox] were quick and very serious," recalls Lev. "For
a few weeks I attended a great many meetings, at which [Fox representatives]
explained to me exactly what they wanted. They exhibited a level of
perseverance and determination I had not encountered before and did not
waste any time, something critical to startups."
Lev would not disclose how much he received for the company, but commented
that the investors received a good return on their money. After the sale,
Lev was appointed a senior vice president at Fox, where he continues to be
responsible for KSolo's operations.
The Jewish Virtual Library wrote in their
article on MySpace's
Lev Nimrod's
connection to the Israeli military:
Ironically enough, it was war-not love-that prepared Lev for his career and
reinforced his belief in promulgating the Jewish faith via Jewish marriages.
Military service is compulsory in Israel-women serve two years and men
three. Lev, however, opted to serve five: three years as a paratrooper in a
combat unit and then two years in charge of an intelligence unit that
focused on anti-terrorist tactics.
Today, he is a captain in the reserves.
"When you walk 60 miles with 40 pounds on you, everything else looks easy,"
he says.
"I wish that young people didn't have to go through this. At this
age-after high school graduation-they should be thinking about chasing down
dates not about chasing terrorists.
But I know that until we find peace,
everyone has to contribute to Israel's safety. We're defending Israel so
Jews all over the world will have a place to feel safe. This is one of the
reasons we need to do whatever we can to bring Jews together."
Lev Nimrod
The Guardian on how Israel's Foreign Office tries to promote Israel via
MySpace:
Israel seeks friends through MySpace
by Bobbie Johnson
technology correspondent
The Guardian
Saturday 24 March 2007
A 58-year-old Jerusalem woman is not a typical MySpace user - the hugely
popular social networking site is inhabited mostly by people at least 30
years younger.
But the profile she is reading is a profile with a difference: it represents
the entire state of Israel. Officials hope that running a MySpace page
dedicated to Israel will help improve relations with people from other
countries, and increase awareness and communication with those under 35.
The idea belongs to David Saranga, a diplomat based at the Israeli consulate
in New York. Mr. Saranga said research had shown Israel's image among the
young was not good, and that by reaching out through one of the internet's
most popular sites he could repair some of the damage.
"We saw that we had a problem with the 18 to 35 age group. The reason is
that this group doesn't see Israel as relevant. We have to talk to them in
their language, in platforms they are using, and the new media is one of the
ways to do so," he said.
The page is particularly targeted at young Americans, who make up a large
proportion of MySpace users. Since Mr. Saranga set up the page, "Israel" has
gained 963 friends from around the world, including fictional characters
such as TV secret agent Jack Bauer and Star Wars heroine Princess Leia, as
well as, it is claimed, the Hollywood actors George Clooney and Leonardo Di
Caprio.
The pages include pictures of Israeli cities, as well as music that invites
the audience to question the cycle of violence and to "end this holy war".
Among Mr. Saranga's other initiatives are a blog called "isRealli" and an
internet TV station.
Shawn Gold of MySpace
Article from Prison Planet.com on arch-Zionist Murdoch's "cyber trojan
horse":
MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship -
Media elite's last gasp effort to save crumbling empire
by Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prison Planet.com
March 16 2006
MySpace isn't cool, it isn't hip and it isn't trendy. It represents a cyber
trojan horse and the media elite's last gasp effort to reclaim control of
the Internet and sink it with a stranglehold of regulation, control and
censorship.
Since Rupert Murdoch's $580 Million acquisition of MySpace in July 2005, it
has come from total obscurity to now being the 8th most visited website in
the world, receiving half as many page hits as Google, despite the fact that
on first appearance it looks like a 5-year-old's picture scrap and scribble
book.
MySpace is the new mobile phone. If you don't have a MySpace account then
you belong to some kind of culturally shunned underclass.
What most of the trendy wendy's remain blissfully unaware of is the fact
that MySpace is Rupert Murdoch's battle axe for shaping a future Internet
environment whereby electronic dissent, whether it be against corporations
or government, will not tolerated and freedom of e-speech will cease to
exist.
MySpace has been caught shutting down blogs critical of itself and other
Murdoch owned companies. They even had the audacity to censor links to
completely different websites when clicking through for MySpace. When 600
MySpace users complained, MySpace deleted the blog forum that the complaints
were posted on. Taking their inspiration from Communist China, MySpace
regularly uses blanket censorship to block out words like 'God'.
Earlier this week Rupert Murdoch sounded the death knell for conventional
forms of media in stating that the media elite were losing their monopoly to
the rapid and free spread of new communication technologies. Murdoch
stressed the need to regain control of these outlets in order to prevent the
establishment media empire from crumbling.
MySpace is Rupert Murdoch's trojan horse for destroying free speech on the
Internet. It is a foundational keystone of the first wave of the state's
backlash to the damage that a free and open Internet has done to their
organs of propaganda. By firstly making it cool, trendy and culturally elite
for millions to flock to establishment controlled Internet backbones like
MySpace, Murdoch is preparing the groundwork for the day when it will stop
being voluntary and become mandatory to use government and corporate
monopoly controlled Internet hubs.
The end game is a system similar to or worse than China, whereby no websites
even mildly critical of the government will be authorized.
The Pentagon admitted that they would engage in psychological warfare and
cyber attacks on 'enemy' Internet websites in an attempt to shut them down.
The fact that the NSA surveillance program spied on 5,000 Americans tells us
that the enemy is the alternative media and that it will be targeted for
elimination. Google has been ordered to turn over information about its
users by a judge to the US government.
The second wave of destroying freedom of speech online will simply attempt
to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over
to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be
obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.
The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database
and marketing tool.
The Nation magazine reported,
"Verizon, Comcast, Bell
South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would
track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast
data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the
National Security Agency.
According to white papers now being circulated in
the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the
deepest pockets - corporations, special-interest groups and major
advertisers - would get preferred treatment.
Content from these providers
would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while
information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could
be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out."
The original Internet will deliberately be subject to crash upon crash until
it becomes a useless carcass of overpriced trash and its reputation will be
defiled by the TV and media barons cashing in on the perfectly streamlined
Internet 2, the free for all network that just requires you to thumbscan in
order to log on! Those with a security grading below yellow on their
national ID card will unfortunately be refused access.
Websites that carry
hate speech (ones that talk about government corruption) will be censored
for the betterment of society.
For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been
seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET
was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom's best
friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short
term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world
under a global surveillance panopticon prison.
Rupert Murdoch's MySpace and its ceaseless promotion by the establishment
media as the best thing since sliced bread is part of this movement. In
saying all this we do encourage everyone to set up a MySpace account, but
only if you're going to use it to bash MySpace, Rupert Murdoch and copy and
paste this article right at the top of the page!
See how long it is before
your account is terminated.
eBay
The
Jewish boasting page writes on the Jewish
first President of eBay, the Canadian-born Jeff Skoll:
Jeff Skoll did not create eBay, non-Jew Pierre Omidyar did in 1993.
For Omidyar, born to French and Iranian parents, creating an on-line auction
Web-site was a Labor Day weekend hobby project. For its first couple of
years, it was simply a free Web-site Omidyar ran on his own home page along
with several other of his Web page creations. During the first few months,
he tried to recruit Skoll, a Jewish French-Canadian he met through friends,
to become his partner. Skoll turned him down, choosing to remain at Stanford
Business School.
In early 1996, Omidyar's Internet service provider began charging him $250 a
month to host the site. Omidyar was forced to start charging a fee, which he
passed along to the site's users based on the sale price of auction items.
As the checks started rolling in Omidyar realized he needed help. Again, he
approached Skoll.
This time, after a few months of consulting for eBay, Skoll signed on as its first full time employee and President.
Jeff Skoll
Skoll grew up in Canada and showed early signs of being a driven
entrepreneur.
At twelve, he was selling Amway products door-to-door. After
graduating from the University of Toronto with a 4.0 grade point average, he
set up two high tech companies before moving to Palo Alto to enroll at
Stanford Business School. Compensating for Omidyar's easy going ways and
enjoyment of programming, Skoll was the driven leader who planned the
business and made things happen.
He hired key people, established much of
the culture, and constantly pushed to build the business.
The result is the number one auction Web site in the world. It grossed $3.9
billion in 2004, netted $936 million and was worth $53 billion by mid 2005,
all of which made both Omidyar and Skoll very wealthy. Skoll has since left
eBay and now devotes the bulk of his time to philanthropic activities,
particularly his Skoll Foundation to which he has donated $250 million.
The
Foundation supports social entrepreneurs working to effect lasting positive
social changes worldwide. In 2003, Skoll won recognition from Business Week
magazine as "one of the most innovative philanthropists of the past decade".
Ed Skoll also interacts with fellow Jewish Internet entrepreneurs.
We have
named the Israel-loving financier and Board member of Facebook, Peter Thiel,
in our section on that company. Thiel together with the Ukrainan Jew Max Rafael Levchin
founded PayPal. The company was then bought by eBay.
In an excerpt from "Once
You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise
of Web 2.0", by Sarah Lacy, we can
see how Skoll "became friends with the PayPal crew" of Jews and even entered
the movie business:
The PayPal mafia even had Hollywood success.
Jeff Skoll was one of the first
eBay executives who became friends with the PayPal crew when eBay bought the
company in 2002. He started up Participant Productions on a lark, and it has
been one of the most profitable productions companies in Hollywood. Among
its first four films were Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, North Country,
and An Inconvenient Truth.
Skoll's success convinced Max and Peter to start
dabbling in Hollywood, bankrolling the 2006 indie flick Thank You for
Smoking, along with David Sacks, PayPal's former chief operating officer.
While Sacks continued to play the Hollywood game, he also launched a new
social networking site for families, called Geni.com.
It allows people to
fill out their family trees and link them to the family trees of spouses and
in-laws. Anyone on the tree can add to the tree, the idea being that over
time you discover people you're related to that you didn't know. It's a bold
idea, one of the first Web 2.0 start-ups aimed squarely at families.
Peter Thiel, naturally, backed it early on. And in Geni's first venture capital
round with Charles River Ventures, it got nosebleed $100 million valuation.
The CRV partner who wrote the check was George Zachary, Skoll's early
partner in Participant Productions and a friend of Max and Peter's. By 2006,
the PayPal mafia was an incestuous world where, for now, everyone seemed to
be making lots of money.
Just to clarify both David Sacks, PayPal's former chief operating officer,
and George Zachary, "Skoll's early partner in Participant Productions and a
friend of Max and Peter's", are Jewish.
Another Jew in Skoll's present entourage is Larry Brilliant who we detail
more in our section on Google where he for 3 years was responsible for
Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. In 2009 Brilliant joined a new
organization set up by Jeff Skoll. But Dr. Brilliant also said he would
remain as an advisor to Google.
Skoll was President of eBay until 1998 when he became Vice President,
Strategic Planning and Analysis, until back problems necessitated his
departure from full-time employment at the company.
Once eBay's second
largest stockholder (behind only Omidyar) he subsequently cashed out a
portion of his company holdings, yielding him around $2 billion.
Jeff Skoll of eBay
Yossi Vardi - "Israeli technology guru"
Article from European Jewish Congress, Thursday, May 22, 2008:
Yossi Vardi: Israel’s ’Mr.. Tech’
by Jennifer L. Schenker
It’s May 15, and Israeli technology guru Yossi Vardi is moderating a session
on the future of the Internet at a conference in Jerusalem.
On stage with
the fatherly 65-year-old is a who’s who of tech and media bigwigs, including
Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin, Yahoo ! (YHOO) President Susan Decker,
and News Corp. (NWS) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.
Vardi (right in the above photo) isn’t the least bit cowed by their
eminence. In his irrepressible manner, he calls out to the crowd : "How many
Israeli entrepreneurs in the audience want to do business with Yahoo ?" He
then tries to get Decker to give out her personal e-mail address. (She
declines.) Vardi settles for announcing the e-mail of Yahoo’s head of
European operations to the scores of entrepreneurs who have raised their
hands.
Undoubtedly the most prominent and connected tech entrepreneur in Israel,
Vardi makes no bones about his objectives. The point of moderating the tech
panel, he says later with a laugh, was to "shamelessly promote Israel’s
high-tech sector."
The same evening, he tries to convince Brin to do more
business in Israel by dragging the Google co-founder and his parents to a
dilapidated warehouse in the suburbs of Tel Aviv to introduce them to 300
Israeli "garage geeks" who tinker there.
Now this goodwill ambassador-long known for his connections in Silicon
Valley-has been tapped by the Israeli government to help deepen ties with
Europe. Vardi was recently named co-chairman-alongside Mathias Döpfner, the
chief executive of German media company Axel Springer (SPRGN)-of a group
called the EU-Israel Business Dialogue.
Its aim is to foster business
relations between Israel and Europe through events such as the upcoming
Israel Innovation Day in Germany on June 16.
Making Deals, Earning Respect
Although the panel’s work is just getting under way, Europe’s big tech
companies have already been eyeing Israeli innovation for some time.
In
March, a France Telecom (FTE) subsidiary spent $21.4 million for a startup
called Orca Interactive, based in Ra’anana, near Tel Aviv, that develops
Internet TV software and applications. Germany’s Deutsche Telekom (DT) has
opened a research and development laboratory at Israel’s Ben-Gurion
University focused on network security.
And Britain’s BT Group (BT) is,
"actively scouting for Israeli technologies to use either ourselves or for
our customers," says Gary Shainberg, BT’s vice-president for technology and
innovation support.
Such deals are welcome news to Vardi, who founded his first technology
startup in 1969 and has gone on to be involved in more than 60 Israeli tech
ventures.
He has taken seven companies public and sold many others-the most
famous of which was ICQ, the first Internet instant-messaging company, which
was acquired by AOL (TWX) for more than $400 million.
But more than his financial success, what has turned the avuncular Vardi
into Israel’s Mr.. Tech is relentless networking, his passionate belief in
the cause, and generosity with his time and money. Known for his love of
gadgets and mischievous sense of humor, Vardi has plowed his gains from ICQ
and other successes back into startups, serving as angel investor and mentor
to scores of young Israelis.
He now counts more than 40 companies in his
investment portfolio, and spends much of his time traveling around the world
to promote these and other Israeli companies at business events.
That commitment and kindness has earned Vardi legions of admirers, including
Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, who calls him Israel’s "best
ambassador" to the world of science and technology.
Vardi isn’t in it for
the money, Peres insists.
"He is after the science itself. He really and
sincerely wakes up in the morning, opens his eyes, and asks, ’God, what can
I discover of your secrets today ?’ And once he has it, he will relate it to
others."
Groundbreaking Generosity
There’s another motivation as well, says Vardi, who had a long civil service
career in Israel : what he calls modern day Zionism.
"I belong to the
generation that witnessed the creation of the state," Vardi says. "I still
remember the dancing in the streets on the 29th of November, 1947, so for
me, what I am doing, is a current manifestation of pioneering the building
of the state of Israel."
At times, Vardi may be too much of a soft touch.
He says he hates to read
business plans and instead goes with his gut-sometimes even committing to
investments over the phone if he believes in the entrepreneur making the
pitch.
"My wife, Thalma, who keeps me connected to the ground, tells me it
doesn’t make sense that every kid with shining eyes walks away from a
meeting with me with a check," says Vardi.
"But I tell her if I lose the
money at least it goes to nice people and allows them to follow their
dreams. Who wants to give money to jerks?"
Thanks in part to his involvement, high tech now represents a vibrant
portion of Israel’s economy (BusinessWeek.com, 5/13/08).
But the domestic
market is so small that Israeli tech companies have to grow their businesses
quickly in the U.S. and Europe. Nobody can open doors abroad like Vardi, say
entrepreneurs and executives.
"Yossi is a super-node," says BT’s Shainberg. "He connects people and
companies from around the world to leverage the world-beating technology
innovation in Israel."
With the help of Vardi and the Israeli Trade &
Industry Assn., Shainberg is bringing a group of Israeli tech entrepreneurs
to London on June 10-11 to meet with executives from the British phone
company and its partners.
Forging Relationships
Indeed, Vardi’s web of connections spreads throughout the Continent.
He has,
for instance, a long-standing relationship with German publishing company
Hubert Burda Media, acting as an informal adviser on digital strategies.
A
few years back, he helped the company set up a conference called Cool
Companies in the Hot Desert that brought a group of German tech
entrepreneurs to Israel.
"Yossi is a connector, a sharer, a giver, a
storyteller," says Stephanie Czerny, Burda’s managing director in charge of
R&D, marketing, and communication.
The success of the event led Vardi and Burda CEO Hubert Burda (left in the
photo) to launch what has quickly become one of Europe’s most important
technology conferences, known as Digital, Life, Design, or DLD.
The annual
event now draws 1,000 attendees every January, and this year Vardi brought
150 Israeli Internet entrepreneurs along with him to the conference to
introduce them to potential investors and business partners.
Vardi thrives on forging those sorts of links.
"Yossi has an amazing
capability and will to connect people," says Tal Keinan, CEO of an Israeli
startup called SemantiNet, one of the companies in Vardi’s portfolio. "This
is priceless for a startup."
Keinan found that out firsthand when Vardi invited him to a private dinner
in London in April.
Held in the BT Tower, the exclusive event included
senior executives from Apple (AAPL), Yahoo, Hutchison Europe, and Google, as
well as partners from investment firms such as Accel Partners and Hasso
Plattner Ventures. As if that wasn’t enough, a few days later back in
Israel, Vardi introduced Keinan to Dell (DELL) founder and CEO Michael Dell.
For all his brokering of deals and relationships, Vardi isn’t impressed by
big names and isn’t in it just for the money.
"It is about building things,
about having fun, about exploring new boundaries, and crossing boundaries,"
says Uri Admon, CEO of an Israeli startup called Dyuna, another company in
Vardi’s portfolio. "He is an inspiration to us all."
Schenker is a BusinessWeek correspondent in Paris.
Other Jewish actors
In August 2007 the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit featured the forum "Social
Networking 3.0". The composition of the panel at this forum was very
illustrative:
Moderator Charlene Li was joined by,
-
Travis Katz, senior Vice President and
General Manager of MySpace International
-
Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of
Facebook
-
Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media and former MySpace
Executive
-
Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning
-
Karl Jacob, CEO of Wallop
The only non-Jew in this panel was Bianchini, the rest - Katz, Moskovitz,
Rosenblatt and Karl Jacob - were are all from the tribe of the "chosen
people", as they call themselves. This clearly illustrates the Jewish
overrepresentation in this field.
We will here reproduce some Jewish articles on the subject of Jews and
Internet.
Networking meeting.
From the left; Travis Katz, Dustin Moskovitz, Richard
Rosenblatt,
Gina Bianchini, Karl Jacob.
Richard Rosenblatt
Karl Jacob
Travis Katz
Dustin Moskovitz
The
Jewish boast-page writes on the subject
(note that the passage below that Google's Larry Page is a "non-Jew" is
utter nonsense, as illustrated by quotes from Jewish sources in our section
on Google):
Jews as High Technology Entrepreneurs and Managers
Jews have traditionally been seen as prominent in such industries as
finance, merchandising, apparel, textiles, entertainment, media, and
publishing.
And in most of them, Jews were true pioneers. They played
leading roles as those industries emerged on the scene.
Their disproportionate importance to the contemporary world of 24/7
competitive high technology is less well known, but they have flourished
there as well. It plays to their strengths. High technology demands a solid
grounding in the underlying science or engineering and that typically calls
for college, and sometimes a post graduate education.
Demographically, Jews
are better educated than their peers. An earlier chapter pointed out the
high levels of Jewish enrollment at leading public and private universities.
The National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 goes further.
It points out
that:
"More than half of all Jewish Adults (55%) received a college degree and a
quarter (25%) earned a graduate degree." "The Comparable figures for the
total U.S. population are 29% and 6%." As a result,
"More than 60% of all employed Jews are in one of the three highest status
job categories: professional or technical (41%), management and executive
(13%) and business and finance (7%)." "In contrast, 46% of all Americans
work in these three high status areas, 29% in professional or technical
jobs, 12% in management and executive positions and 5% in business and
finance."
Jews also tend to be disproportionately entrepreneurial, working where they
will succeed or fail based on their own efforts.
Andrew Grove's decision to
stop writing, and instead to pursue science, illustrates the point.
Judgments about writers are often subjective while those about science are
much less so. Grove wanted to work in a field where he would be judged on
his own performance. He chose chemistry and got his Ph.D. After several
years working with the best and brightest at Fairchild Semiconductor, he
left to become one of the three founders of Intel.
Technology is a high risk meritocracy. While even the most talented people
sometimes fail, and fortune can obliterate the most brilliant of plans;
technology is not political. Relationships and initial funding will carry a
venture only so far. Ultimately it must succeed or fail on its own merits in
a volatile, highly competitive arena.
Such risky opportunities can be
pursued in hospitable climates, such as the United States, and in such
environments, Jewish entrepreneurs have done well.
They:
-
Created the world's largest and most valuable personal computer company;
(Michael Dell, Dell Computers)
-
Co-founded the world's most successful search engine; (Sergy Brin, Google)
-
Head the world's largest software company; (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft)
-
Co-founded and head the world's second largest software company; (Larry
Ellison, Oracle)
-
Co-founded, led and served as Chairman of the dominant microprocessor and
memory chip company whose products drive most of today's personal computers;
(Andrew Grove, Intel)
-
Created the first "killer application" software which ignited demand for
personal computers; (Mitch Kapor, Lotus 123)
-
Served as Number 1 or 2 person in three of the world's four most valuable
Internet companies according to a May 2004 Fortune study (Terry Semmel at
Yahoo, Jeff Skoll at e-Bay and Barry Diller at IAC)
-
Co-founded and head the communications protocol/chip company whose
technology is the market leader in U.S. cell phones and is likely to be the
world leader as the next generation cell phone technology (3G) is adopted
worldwide. (Irwin Jacobs, Qualcomm).
And that is only the barest overview:
Dell
Michael Dell and Larry Ellison (of Oracle) share the distinction of
being two of the most successful college dropouts in history. (Non-Jew Bill
Gates is a third.)
Dell quit the University of Texas in 1985 when he was 19
years old to start Dell Computer Corporation with a $1,000 stake. His idea
was to "cut out the middleman" by selling personal computers (PCs) directly
to customers.
Dell's combination of custom built computers, excellent product quality,
superb customer service, outstanding production efficiency, and low prices
created the world's largest computer manufacturing company. In achieving
that distinction, he took on IBM, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, and many
other PC makers, most of them much bigger and better financed than Dell.
He is emblematic of the creative, determined nature of successful
entrepreneurs. In the process, he made his company one of the most valuable
in the world.
In 1992, Dell became the youngest CEO in history to earn a
spot on the Fortune 500 when his Company had been in existence for only
eight years. With fiscal year 2005 sales of $53 billion, Dell has humbled
most competitors. Despite the challenges of rapid growth and competitive
success, Dell and its founder are consistently counted as among America's
most respected.
The success has earned 40 year old Dell a fortune, sufficient, till his most
recent birthday, to consistently place him among Fortune's "40 under 40."
These are all young entrepreneurs, athletes and entertainers who have
achieved stellar success before reaching age 40. With his wife, Dell has
created the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, endowing it with more than $1
billion. Its focus is the health, education, safety, care and development of
children.
Among its recent commitments was $130 million to help boost high
school graduation and college attendance rates in Texas.
Google
Sergy Brin is the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who left the
Soviet Union in 1979 to escape persecution. Sergy was six at the time.
Mathematically inclined, he earned a computer science degree from University
of Maryland before entering Stanford as a postgraduate student. There he met
non-Jew, Larry Page, also studying for his doctorate. Together, they
developed a search engine - called BackRub before they renamed it Google.
They dropped out of Stanford, rounded up $1 million from friends, family and
angel venture investors and on September 7, 1998, launched Google. Less than
ten years old, it is the most popular search engine on the Web with more
than eighty-two million users each month accessing more than eight billion
Web site pages (twice the comparable 2004 figure).
It employs more than
4,000 people and has had a spectacular run up in its stock price to a value
of roughly $80 billion in mid 2005.
Microsoft
Steve Ballmer did not found Microsoft. Non-Jews Bill Gates and
Paul Allen did.
They started the Company in 1976, five years after they
began programming together while attending Lakeside High School in Seattle
where they had access to the school's computer. Gates went off to Harvard
where he and Ballmer became good friends.
Ballmer was a bright Jewish kid
from Detroit who scored a perfect 800 on his math SATs and who took it upon
himself to "socialize" Gates at Harvard - until Gates dropped out to start
Microsoft. About the same time, Paul Allen dropped out of Washington State
and together Gates and Allen launched the Company.
Gates tried to convince Ballmer to drop out as well, but instead, Ballmer
stayed in school, going on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard in 1977.
He worked for Proctor and Gamble for two years and then entered Stanford
Business School. Perhaps just to "fit in," he then dropped out of Stanford
Business School in 1980 after Gates had made yet one more appeal for him to
join Microsoft. Ballmer was the Company's twenty-fourth employee.
Within three years Paul Allen was gone, the result of a bout with Hodgkin's
Lymphoma. Ballmer served first as the Company's financial disciplinarian and
later became the number two guy, holding down every senior job in the
Company before being named President in 1998 and CEO in 2000.
Known for his
determination and salesmanship, Ballmer has been vital to Microsoft's
success.
Oracle
Larry Ellison is a University of Chicago dropout.
He was one of the
three (later four) partners who founded Oracle Corporation in 1977. Ellison,
the leader, read an IBM article about a new kind of software termed a
"relational database." Then commonly acknowledged as a revolutionary new way
to build a database, no one, not even at IBM, thought it was commercially
viable.
Ellison disagreed and with $2,000, the partners began developing the
software, using cash generated from consulting projects to augment the
$2,000.
Of the four founders, two later left the company and one died. But from the
start, it was Ellison that was, and still is, the driving force behind
Oracle. "Relentless," "determined," and "ruthless" are among terms commonly
used to describe him. He has been schooled in Japanese approaches to
business where anything less than 100 percent market share is not enough.
His strong ego is characterized by the titles of two books about him. The
first is titled, "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison." It is the
first line of an old Silicon Valley joke for which the punch line is "God
does not think he is Larry Ellison." The second book is Everyone Else Must
Fail, for which the preamble is "It is not good enough that I should
succeed."
Ellison was born to an unmarried Jewish teenage mother and an
Italian-American air force pilot father, but he grew up with an aunt, and an
uncle who constantly put young Larry down saying he would never amount to
anything. Harvard Business School's Entrepreneur of the Year in 1990, the
2004 Forbes' 400 lists Ellison as the world's ninth wealthiest person.
Ellison has devoted roughly half a billion dollars to charities,
particularly a medical foundation focused mostly on infectious diseases in
the third world and diseases of aging.
In mid 2005, he also pledged $115
million to Harvard University.
Intel
As noted in the Andrew Grove bio, Intel was formed in 1968 by
non-Jews Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore who recruited Grove to be their
co-founder and third employee.
Their established reputations and ability to
raise the needed $2.5 million from venture capitalist Arthur Rock financed
the Company, Noyce headed up sales and Marketing, Moore R&D, while Grove
headed manufacturing and product development.
Grove disciplined the
organization to set and reach goals and he made the critical decisions, such
committing Intel to the microprocessors which made Intel the huge success it
is.
Lotus
Mitch Kapor did not invent the spreadsheet, but his software program,
Lotus 123, was the first application to spawn huge demand for personal
computers.
Visicalc, an earlier spreadsheet program created by Jew Dan
Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1982, was available on several early computers
including the Apple II a few years before Lotus 123 arrived. But Lotus 123
had many more features, was easier to use, and had far better graphics.
It
provided the compelling reason for consumers to buy personal computers and
demand was so strong, Lotus grossed $53 million in its first year and $156
million by 1984.
Kapor went on to create other major software programs
including Lotus Agenda.
eBay
Jeff Skoll did not create eBay, non-Jew Pierre Omidyar did in 1993.
For Omidyar, born to French and Iranian parents, creating an on-line auction
Web-site was a Labor Day weekend hobby project. For its first couple of
years, it was simply a free Web-site Omidyar ran on his own home page along
with several other of his Web page creations.
During the first few months,
he tried to recruit Skoll, a Jewish French-Canadian he met through friends,
to become his partner. Skoll turned him down, choosing to remain at Stanford
Business School.
In early 1996, Omidyar's Internet service provider began charging him $250 a
month to host the site.
Omidyar was forced to start charging a fee, which he
passed along to the site's users based on the sale price of auction items.
As the checks started rolling in Omidyar realized he needed help. Again, he
approached Skoll. This time, after a few months of consulting for eBay,
Skoll signed on as its first full time employee and President.
Skoll grew up in Canada and showed early signs of being a driven
entrepreneur. At twelve, he was selling Amway products door-to-door.
After
graduating from the University of Toronto with a 4.0 grade point average, he
set up two high tech companies before moving to Palo Alto to enroll at
Stanford Business School. Compensating for Omidyar's easy going ways and
enjoyment of programming, Skoll was the driven leader who planned the
business and made things happen. He hired key people, established much of
the culture, and constantly pushed to build the business.
The result is the number one auction Web site in the world. It grossed $3.9
billion in 2004, netted $936 million and was worth $53 billion by mid 2005,
all of which made both Omidyar and Skoll very wealthy.
Skoll has since left
eBay and now devotes the bulk of his time to philanthropic activities,
particularly his Skoll Foundation to which he has donated $250 million. The
Foundation supports social entrepreneurs working to effect lasting positive
social changes worldwide.
In 2003, Skoll won recognition from Business Week
magazine as "one of the most innovative philanthropists of the past decade"
InterActive Corp (IAC)
Barry Diller has made a career of corporate
transformations.
He started in the mail room at the William Morris Agency in
his early 20s, and at age 24, moved to ABC-TV. Within three years, he was
Vice President of Feature Films and Program Development. In that job he
inaugurated ABC's Movie of the Week, the most popular movie series in
television history.
At ABC Diller pioneered highly profitable
"made-for-television" films which focused on social issues such as
homosexuality, the Vietnam War and drugs.
In 1974, following that success (and still only 32), he was named President
of Paramount Pictures. At Paramount, he oversaw creation of the hit
television series: Cheers, Taxi, and Laverne and Shirley, and hit movies
including: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
Ten
years later he moved to Twentieth Century-FOX where in 1985, after Rupert
Murdoch took over, he launched Fox as the fourth television network. By
1990, Diller had Fox producing five nights of prime time television with
such popular shows as: The Simpsons, Married With Children, Cops and
America's Most Wanted.
Diller quit Fox to purchase a stake in QVC, the cable shopping network, and
from there he launched an unsuccessful bid to take over Paramount. Sumner
Redstone's Viacom beat him out. Shortly thereafter, in 1995, non-Jew John
Malone recruited Diller to leave QVC, invest in and run Liberty Media's
Silver King Communications, which was broadcasting the Home Shopping
Network. Diller later merged Home Shopping into Silver King.
Through a blinding series of name changes, strategic redirections and $8
billion worth of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and investments in
more than 45 companies, Diller created what is now called Interactive Corp
(IAC), the fifth major Internet Company, (behind Google, Amazon, e-Bay, and
Yahoo).
Little known to the general public, IAC controls such prominent
Internet names as: Expedia, Hotels.com, Lending Tree, Hotwire.com, Evite,
Citysearch and Ticketmaster.
Over the years, Diller has served as a director of Coca Cola and the
Washington Post, Trustee of New York University, member of the Executive
Board for Medical Sciences at UCLA, member of the Board of Councilors of
USC's School of Cinema-Television and a member of the Board of the Museum of
Television and Radio.
Yahoo
Terry Semel did not create Yahoo. Non-Jews Jerry Yang and David Filo
did in 1994, as a hobby, while pursuing their electrical engineering PhD's
at Stanford. In those halcyon, "early bubble" days, Yahoo went public within
two years.
It was then, and still is today, regarded as one of the major
Internet successes of all time, but along the way, it hit a bump in the
road. In 2001, Yahoo lost $93 million on revenues of $717 million. The stock
tanked and new talent was needed to avert a melt down.
That is when Terry Semel arrived. Semel had 24 years at Warner Brothers
where he had been instrumental in building the Company from $1 billion to
$11 billion in annual revenues. Semel quickly pushed Yahoo's marketing,
consumers' services and acquisitions and by 2003, he had turned the company
around.
In 2004, Yahoo made $1.6 billion under his leadership.
Qualcomm
Irwin Jacobs is listed as one of seven Qualcomm founders, but by
any measure, he has been the "essential man" from Qualcomm's 1985 inception
till now.
Qualcomm created and controls Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a major
wireless telecommunications technology. It is the most widely used wireless
calling technology in the United States, (47 percent market share) used by
such carriers as Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint. Around the world, 212
million wireless phones already utilize Qualcomm technology and as 3G, the
next generation of wireless, is deployed, Qualcomm is expected to become the
international market leader as well.
Jacobs grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was a mediocre musician,
but an excellent student earning a bachelors degree from Cornell and a
Masters and a Doctor of Science degree from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT).
He taught at MIT and the University of California San
Diego (UCSD) from 1959 to 1972.
While teaching, he wrote a still used college text, Principles of
Communications Engineering, and in 1969, co-founded LINKABIT, a company he
describes as his initial move towards becoming an "academic dropout." That
finally happened in 1972 when he became LINKABIT's full time President and
Chairman.
The Company pioneered satellite TV receiver technology
(VideoCipher) and was the first to commercially introduce Time Division
Multiplex Access (TDMA), the predecessor technology to CDMA. Jacobs built
LINKABIT to 1,400 employees, before merging it with M/A-COM and he served on
that Board until 1985.
Initially, Qualcomm did research and development and some manufacturing for
wireless companies while it built the largest satellite-based messaging
service used by trucking companies to manage their fleets. That service was
quickly overshadowed, however, by CDMA. By 2004, CDMA was generating over $5
billion in annual revenues.
All of this has made Jacobs (and his fellow founders) quite wealthy. Jacobs
has responded with major philanthropy. He and his wife have given $110
million to the San Diego Symphony (hearkening back to his days as a mediocre
musician), another $110 million went to the UCSD to "support the other
faculty that are currently doing the teaching," $7 million went to the Salk
Institute, and millions more has gone to support the San Diego Food Bank and
historic New Bedford.
Both he, and fellow Qualcomm founder Andrew Viterbi
now have schools of engineering named after them, Jacobs at UCSD and Viterbi
and the University of Southern California.
RealNetworks
Ron Glaser takes credit for creating the first technology to
"stream" audio, video, and other digital content, such as music and games,
to computers. He founded RealNetworks in 1994 to capitalize on the
technology.
Fresh out of Yale with degrees in economics and computer sciences, Glaser
joined Microsoft in 1983 where he rose, over his ten years there, to become
Vice President of Multimedia and Consumer Systems.
He left Microsoft in 1994
and shortly thereafter, says he downloaded Mosaic, an early version of the
Netscape Internet browser. He immediately saw the potential to augment the
browser with "streaming." He founded RealNetworks and was soon able to take
it public. It became a hot Internet stock and, for a time, Glaser was a
billionaire.
Today, following the bursting of the Internet bubble and heightened
competition with Microsoft's Media Player and Apple's Quicktime,
RealNetworks continues to post operating losses and it is taking on
Microsoft in court.
Like earlier Federal and state lawsuits against
Microsoft, Glaser's company claims Microsoft competes unfairly by bundling
its Mediaplayer into its software. Win or lose, RealNetworks has sufficient
cash to finance itself for some time and thus remain a major Internet force,
particularly as the downloading of music and games becomes ever more
prolific.
If RealNetworks succeeds, Glaser will rejoin the ranks of
billionaires who hit it big with their Internet technology innovations.
Broadcast.com & HDNet
Mark Cuban grew up poor, the son of Russian Jewish
emigrants in blue collar Pittsburgh.
He was a bright student who was also
considered something of a hustler with his native selling ability (selling
garbage bags, greeting cards and magazines, all door-to-door, from the time
he was 12.) At the University of Indiana he started a chain letter and gave
disco dancing lessons to pay for school.
After graduating in 1983 he started a computer consulting firm,
MicroSolutions, though he neither owned, nor knew much about, computers.
Self-taught by having to learn to perform on the promises he made to
customers, he built the Company to revenues of $30 million a year before
selling it to Compuserve. He made himself wealthy in the process.
He then "kicked back" for a few years, before returning in 1995, with
partner Todd R. Wagner (not Jewish), to create Broadcast.com. It pioneered
radio and television broadcasting over the Internet. Cuban and Wagner soon
took it public and, in 1999, sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Cuban and
Wagner were billionaires.
His attention then shifted to his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks
basketball team. Cuban is a brash, avid, courtside presence whose outbursts
have cost him an estimated $1 million in fines. At the same time, his savvy
marketing and recruiting of top talent has converted the Mavericks from a
perennial loser to a contender.
Cuban also launched HDNet, a high definition television broadcast network
available on satellite, cable, and selected over the air high definition
broadcast stations.
He and Wagner also purchased Landmark theaters, a large
U.S. chain of "art-house" movie theaters which will air the high definition
movies he is producing and the films he has contracted six major studios to
convert from film to digital.
Measures of entrepreneurial success
One measure of entrepreneurial success is provided by the Fortune "40 Under
40" annual list of the wealthiest young Americans, nearly all of them self
made.
Though entrepreneurial success is not simply about wealth, it is one
scorecard. The Fortune's 2004 list is included as Exhibit 16a. While it
includes thirteen athletes and entertainers, the remaining twenty-seven are
successful young entrepreneurs, mostly from high technology companies they
started or led.
Of the twenty-seven, at least six are Jewish. Three of them
are among the top five and five of them among the top ten. In order, the six
include: #1 Michael Dell, #3 Jeff Skoll, #5 Sergey Brin, #9 Dan Snyder, #10,
Marc Benioff, and #17 Jerry Greenberg.
Statistically, at two percent of the
U.S. population, Jews would be lucky if even one of the twenty-seven was
Jewish. At 22 percent, the result is ten times what one would expect.
The Forbes 400 corroborates the Fortune list. (Exhibit 16b) Of the year 2004
ranking, at least 25 percent of the "400" are Jewish. And like the Fortune
"40 Under 40," many of them made their wealth as entrepreneurs who started
successful businesses. Prominent among the first twenty-five are #9 Michael
Dell, #10 Lawrence Ellison, and #11 Steven Balmer.
As with the Fortune 40,
the performance defies expectations. We would expect perhaps eight Jews
among the 400, the actual figure (at least 102) is twelve times that.
And another Jewish article, this time from
Emergentobserver:
OMG, A Jewish History of the Internet
Did you know that the internet is Jewish?
Yeah...Moses got the Torah from HaShem on Mt. Sinai and HaShem told Moses that his brother Aaron and his
descendants would be Kohenim forever.
Now a "Kohen" is a priest and the
story of the internet involves a Jewish priest, a Jewish painter, a Jewish
Scotsman and a Jewish sugar merchant living high in the mountains...well
sort of...
In 1972, at the International Computer Communication Conference, Robert Kahn
(a kohen) was able to connect 40 different computers revealing his work to
the public for the first time. Just three years later David Farber (whose
Yiddish family name means “painter”) worked to create a primitive kind of
email system.
Within the next twenty years the internet that we now know and
love was born. In 2003 MySpace was launched and by 2006 it had become the
largest social networking site in the United States. MySpace added a new
dimension to how we communicate and share information with our friends,
family and even religious communities.
The website was co-founded by Tom
Anderson. Although Tom’s last name reflects his father’s Scottish heritage,
he and his mother are Jewish and he was raised in a messianic Jewish
household. At the age of 14 Tom was a computer hacker working his mischief
under the tag name Lord Flathead (not a Jewish name).
He lead a team of
hackers that were able to brake in to Chase Manhattan Bank computers, he
tampered with banking records and left a message saying that unless he was
given free use of the system he would wipeout the records.
He must have been
praying because he was never charged with the crime.
The website Tom would
later become famous for inspired a 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg (a Jewish
name meaning “sugar mountain”) to create another social networking site
called Facebook. Things are looking sweeter then a pile of sugar for
Zuckerberg because Facebook has made him over a billion dollars and more
people can be found on his networking site then in the entire country of
Japan.
…So we see that many key players in the field of computer technologies are
our fellow tribesmen.
The internet itself has even been compared to the
Talmud…layers upon layers of commentary dealing with issues from personal
hygiene to oven construction. However the internet is only truly comparable
to the Talmud if it’s dialogue eventually returns to G-dly matters. The
Talmud finds a way to elevate even mundane and seemingly secular matters to
a level of Torah.
We should do the same with our technologies, only then do
they become truly Jewish.
And finally yet another Jewish boasting
article on the same topic:
Jews On The Internet
by Larry Kuperman
July 29, 2007
The question of how many Jews there are begs the definition of "What is a
Jew?" and also "Who is a Jew?"
Questions that have been asked many a
time.....mostly by other Jews. Being a Secular Jew myself, I like the most
liberal, inclusive definition that includes....well ME. The biggest number
that you will see is about 18 million Jews. This works out to something like
1/4 of one per cent of the world's population. So you would expect that our
impact on the Internet would be proportional to our numbers.
Not so, bubbala. (A term of endearment, darling. Can you feel me virtually
pinching your cheek? In a nice way.) The impact of Jews far outweighs their
numbers. Lets look at "Who's A Yid?"
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google. Larry Page's mom, Gloria
Page, is Jewish. Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, Russia, to Jewish parents,
Michael and Eugenia, who fled to America for religious freedom.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, while he was a student at Harvard
University. It was originally going to be limited to Harvard students, but
expanded quickly. Zuckerberg saw the potential in the site and sought
capital. He turned to Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Paypal and,
not-so-coincidentally, also Jewish. Facebook is often rumored to be up for
sale.
How much is Facebook worth?
Let me refer that to Mr.. Thiel:
"Facebook's internal valuation is around $8 billion based on their projected
revenues of $1 billion by 2015."
Founder Mark Zuckerberg is 23, or as we
like to say, 10 years past his Bar Mitzvah.
Robert Kevin Rose is, comparatively, an old man at age 30. He is best known
for founding Digg.com. Robert lost his job during the burst of the Dot Com
bubble, ended up working as a production assistant on the show The Screen
Savers He began appearing on air and stepped in as host after Leo Laporte
left TechTV.
On November 1, 2004, he started a site that combined social
bookmarking, blogging, RSS into arguably the premier tech news site. Today
Digg is rated among the 100 most popular sites on the web.
Scott Blum has been referred to as the "Sam Walton of e-commerce." Leaving a
successful career as a shoe salesman as a youth, he founded Microbanks, a
company that sold add-on memory modules for Macintosh computers. Before his
21st birthday, he sold Microbanks to Sentron Technology in San Diego for
$2.5 million in cash. He would then co-found Pinnacle Micro with his father.
Leaving there under a cloud of dubious accounting practices (he paid no
penalty and admitted no guilt) he would go on to found Buy.com. He left
before went public, returned to take it back private and it is now his baby.
RealNetworks is not the most beloved company in the world, nor is Real
Player a favorite product. But there is no question that CEO and Founder Rob
Glaser has been influential. When he founded Real Networks in 1994, at age
31, he was already a millionaire from his days at Microsoft. He has had a
major impact on the Internet.
Certainly also worth mentioning are,
-
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, whose
mother is Jewish
-
Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle,
who was born on the Lower East Side of New York to a Jewish
mother and raised by his great-aunt and great-uncle in Chicago
-
Phillipe Kahn, founder of Borland
What would the Internet be like with Google, PayPal, Facebook, Digg.com,
Buy.com?
It would be very, very different...