Detroit"s Digital Divide: Low Income Citizens Build Their Own Internet

The city of Detroit, in the U.S. state of Michigan, has experienced an impressive economic and demographic shift over the past 50-years.

Deindustrialization coupled with depopulation has stripped the city of it’s economic strength cascading it into turmoil. Global competition from automakers shifted manufacturing jobs out of the area. As businesses left, communities decayed, inducing a terrifying surge in violent crime. Urban rot came next festering from within and eventually sending the city into bankruptcy in 2013 where it reemerged in 2014.

Five-years later, Detroit has gotten worse – not better - and the city is having trouble providing basic utilities for its residents.

In particular, the city along with internet service providers are failing to deliver high-speed internet to a significant part of the low income areas. 

That is why one community group of technology geeks have banded together to create an internet of their own.

Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) is a program that teaches Detroit residents how to build high speed WiFi networks. EII says Detroit is one of the top 5 least connected cities in the United States coupled with 60% of the city residents that do not have access to high-speed internet. The group aims to stop the growing digital divide that is leaving many low income residents behind and forgotten in the inner cities where there is only death and destruction.

EII has trained teams in the North End, Island View, and Southwest Detroit to setup infrastructure: a church that functions as a hub and internet service provider which then a signaled is beamed to communities that don’t have access to high-speed internet.

Residents who want internet from EII have to meet two requirements:

1. can’t afford internet


2. don’t already have internet or <10 Mbps

Once the requirements are met, EII will send a team to the residential location and install an outdoor directional antenna and an indoor router with a setup time around one-hour. EII recognizes that access to high-speed internet is a worldwide problem and if that is not fixed a “digital class system” will develop.

EII wants high-speed access for everyone..Popular Mechanics also said,

The EII offers a radical proposition that would allow people to get Internet outside of a major telecom. But it’s got its own money concerns. Initially, it worked off a federal grant. When that money dried up, the deal with Rocket Fiber made it viable again.

 

But that partnership will not cover the costs of more and more internet connections growing in perpetuity. Jenny Lee, the executive director of Allied Media Projects, the group behind EII, raised the question in a recent article. “How do we do this in way that doesn’t replicate the inequities of other utility companies? Are we going to be the equivalent of water department coming to shut you off if you don’t pay your bill?”

 

One way the group hopes it will prove its worth is by creating apps. Its Next Gen Apps program teaches students coding basics like CSS, HTML, Javascript, and Node.js. Combined with the EII’s efforts to provide internet in their areas, there’s a hope that people will truly make the internet their own.

Bottomline: Detroit is a prime example of citizens working together for survival in a post collapsed bankrupt city. The one question we have: how long until government shuts down this private internet?

 

One Statistics Professor Was Just Banned By Google: Here Is His Story

Statistics professor Salil Mehta, adjunct professor at Columbia and Georgetown who teaches probability and data science and whose work has appeared on this website on numerous prior occasions, was banned by Google on Friday.

What did Salil do to provoke Google? It is not entirely clear, however what is clear is that his repeated attempts at restoring his email, blog and other Google-linked accounts have so far been rejected with a blanket and uniform statement from the search giant.

Here is what happened, in Salil Mehta"s own words.

Don’t do a googol of evil

Freedom is not free unless corporations who exert a large influence in our lives believe in our well-being.  I am a statistics professor and understand that there needs to be reasonable standards to control a large social network and make sure everyone is able to enjoy it freely.  Invariably people disagree (we all see this), but some principles, such as simply showing probability and statistics with the sole hope of educating others, should be acceptable and in the middle of the distribution.  I am for a higher standard, and a higher purpose.  There is great care that I have taken to make sure that people treat one other well, admit faults, and present math and probability education to a wide audience.

On Friday afternoon East Coast Time by surprise, I was completely shut down in all my Google accounts (all of my gmail accounts, blog, all of my university pages that were on google sites, etc.) for no reason and no warning.  A number of us were stunned and unsure, but clearly we know at this point it wasn’t an accident.  Here are some examples commented from best-selling author Nassim Taleb, and they have been retweeted by government officials, and the NYT and WSJ journalists. 

Even his email was disabled by Google. https://t.co/Zj9g9MpKzr

— NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) August 19, 2017

      My ads-free blog itself is a probability theory site, with 27 million reads and has somewhere near 150k overall followers.     It’s been read by Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Nobel Laureates, multiple governments, celebrity athletes around the world, deans of many universities (on the syllabi of same), and a number of TV news anchors.  So it’s been a great boon for Google to be noticed so kindly by essentially a charitable site promoting math education.  What great people from all corners of the world and at all levels who can enjoy Google, until it suddenly died Friday afternoon.

My background is clean, and without a political or social agenda.  I am not promoting any specific viewpoint.  I teach probability math and that’s it.  Have worked with both the Obama administration and advised on polling statistics for the Trump campaign, am an adjunct professor at three top universities, an editor of the peer-reviewed journal of the American Statistical Association, and wrote a best-selling statistics book (all the proceeds of which I gave to charity!) https://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Topics-Salil-Mehta/dp/1499273533

The NYT has a popular print article this weekend and they cited my Google blog, but alas it not links to an embarrassing malfunction, for many to see: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/business/the-stock-market-has-been-magical-it-cant-last.html

This doesn’t look good.  Now instead of mathematics, reporters have turned to this latest circus nightmare from Google as an example of how they are compounding bad decisions on good people anywhere and at any time. 

Can they not differentiate me from an evil person?  Can they not see the large and reputable people and institutions that have relied on my work?  Do they have better people who can coach them on how to make decisions with much better taste and finesse?  What’s next, all CEOs and professors and politicians are going to be shut down from social media whenever it is least expected?  Overnight hi-tech lynching squads are a thing of the past.  We can’t have kangaroo courts and hope to lead with moral authority.

There is a lot of energy being spent right now thinking about how this happens to your best customers, just like that.  Fear is running wild about who is next and on what other social media platforms.  Have used Google for 11 years with no issue.  Have driven enormous free traffic to your products and properties.  But now that’s been severely damaged as the trust/reputational value has been crushed, and I have to re-emerge quickly elsewhere and deal with this fall-out.  I have many students, family, coworkers, etc who typically send me e-mails each day and all of it is vanishing with a kicked-back “user doesn’t exist” error.  And that’s totally unacceptable.  Through my many companies have business accounts on different social media and have no issue getting a marketing line, but one needs to know who they are dealing with and not treat them this badly.  The wrongs here are not being done by me.

Again, a math site.  An academic site that you can see from the various header tabs of the archives (http://web.archive.org/web/20170518181653/http://statisticalideas.blogspot.com/2012/11/statistical-ideas-website.html).  These are applications of formulas and shouldn’t be subject of limitations of free speech.  A lot of great people like it.  Hopefully Google needs to take huge step back and reexamine what went wrong and how the product could be better for others going forward, so that they and all of us grow well.  People’s faith in democracy is on the line.  Faith that technology companies are looking out for our good first.

I have followed their common “appeal” form but no response for three days.  Also connected with one of the VPs over the weekend and it still takes time until receiving this today!  Just more of a reflection of how cold a company can treat someone very poorly: without any information, and lack of ability to move forward in their life (can I get real reasons if any, can I get advance notice, can I get my contact list back from gmail, and why are university properties unrelated to my blog shut down?) 

We are going to be looking back on this time in Google’s history and those of other social media and know that they have done some very immoral and confusing things, and it has hurt their public reputation with decent people who wanted to grow into the next future with them

Alex Jones Invites Media to Discuss His Child Custody Trial, Then Delivers His Magnum Opus

The media was gleefully cheering on the specter of Jones losing sole custody of his children. So he invited them to the front of the courthouse to discuss the facts about the trial, and then about 15 minutes in started to redpill them on things, like chimeras and other wondrous and nightmarish mutations.

This was his magnum opus.

Watch.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

42 Years of Fractional Reserve Alchemy

Hold your real assets outside of the banking system in one of many private international facilities  -->    https://www.sprottmoney.com/intlstorage 

Posted with permission and written by Craig Hemke (CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL)

It has now been 42 years since The Global Bankers successfully alchemized gold through the advent of futures trading, so we begin the new year by looking back at how we got into this position in the first place.

 

To that end, let"s start 2017 by going back to 1974.

 

Over the past few years, you"ve often heard me reference the HISTORY and FACT of gold price suppression and manipulation. Whenever it comes up in an interview or presentation, it often goes like this:

 

• After Bretton Woods, the US tried to go it alone in managing the price of gold to $35/ounce. By the late 1950s, this caused a mini-crisis when US gold reserves fell by a third as countries around the world exchanged their dollars for gold. There were hearings on Capitol Hill and decisions were made to change the way that $35 gold would be managed.


• This led to the formation of The London Gold Pool in 1961. No longer would the US go it alone in providing physical metal at the $35/ounce price. Seven other countries were recruited to the effort in order to lessen the burden and drawdown of US reserves. This effort to manage the $35 price worked for nearly seven years until global gold demand finally overwhelmed the Gold Pool and the effort collapsed in 1968.


• The US was suddenly on its own again and demand for gold in exchange for dollars soon grew to such an extreme that President Nixon was forced to cancel the dollar"s convertibility into gold on August 15, 1971. This is the "closing of the gold window" that you"ve heard so much about.

 

A new movement to allow private gold ownership in the US soon began...recall that FDR had outlawed private gold ownership in 1933...and on January 1, 1975, US citizens were finally allowed to once again own and hold physical gold.

 

But something very important happened the day before, on December 31, 1974. On that date, the Commodity Exchange Inc., also known as The Comex, began trading gold futures contracts and, as you"ll see below, it was through these gold derivative contracts that the global bankers and governments finally perfected alchemy...a pursuit which had foiled and baffled scientists for centuries.

 

You may recall that a few years back, Wikileaks unveiled a whole assortment of previously-classified US government cables and transmissions. Wikileaks documented them all together and posted them to their website under the category of "Public Library of US Diplomacy". From the site, please read through this cable from December 10, 1974:

 

 

The entire document lays bare the intention behind the manufacture of gold derivatives to replace physical metal. However, in case you missed it, here"s the key paragraph:

 

 

And there you have it. Laid bare for all to see. The "Dealers" expectations" of 1974 are manifest in 2017. The futures market is "of significant proportion" and physical trading is "miniscule by comparison". Price suppression, manipulation and volatility has "negated long-term hoarding" of gold by US citizens and very few even consider gold as money at all with the vast majority seeing it only as a commodity or a "hedge".

 

However, the fraud of the Banker"s alchemy will one day come to an end as confidence in fiat currency collapses and physical demand for real money overwhelms this fractional reserve system. Will/can this occur in 2017? It"s certainly possible as negative interest rates and currency devaluations lead to all sorts of unexpected consequences. But the timing hardly matters when the end result is a foregone conclusion. No system built upon a foundation of deceit and fraud can stand the test of time, and the Banker"s fractional reserve alchemy is no different. It will one day collapse. Of that you can be certain.

 

(A major h/t to James Henry Anderson for reposting the Wikileak page to Twitter on January 1.)

 

 

Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE

Posted with permission and written by Craig Hemke (CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL)