The Independent View

Google has made avail­able its search engine index from 2001 as part of its 10th anniver­sary. Here are a few tid­bits that you may not find on today’s Internet…

13TH DISTRICT, Demo­c­rat: Barack Obama. Sup­ports gay rights, same-​sex mar­riage; increased AIDS fund­ing, abor­tion rights, affir­ma­tive action. Endorsed by IFHR, IMPACT, IVI-​IPO, Illi­nois and Chicago NOW, Per­sonal PAC. — Trudy Ring, Elec­tions set for Illi­nois House, Sen­ate,; McK­eon runs for Rep, Novem­ber 1996.

Obama was an active mem­ber of the now-​defunct social­ist New Party! “Chicago DSA is affil­i­ated with the national Demo­c­ra­tic Social­ists of Amer­ica.” From Octo­ber 1996: “Three NP-​members won Demo­c­ra­tic pri­maries last Spring and face off against Repub­li­can oppo­nents on elec­tion day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Sen­ate) and Patri­cia Mar­tin (Cook County Judi­ciary).” Novem­ber 2006: “New Party mem­ber Barack Obama was uncon­tested for a State Sen­ate seat from Chicago.” [More to fol­low in sep­a­rate post, such as Obama’s ideas on social wages and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. — Matthew]

Obama “spent five years work­ing as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer, first in Harlem, then in Chicago.” “Obama serves on the boards of sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions: includ­ing the Chicago Annen­berg Cen­ter Chal­lenge (Chair­man), the Joyce Foun­da­tion, the Woods Fund of Chicago, the Cen­ter for Neigh­bor­hood Tech­nol­ogy, the Chicago Lawyers Com­mit­tee for Civil Rights Under the Law and Pub­lic Allies.” — Harvard

Claims to have been “deeply involved on my cam­pus” (Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity) in anti-​apartheid divest­ment from South Africa. – Interview with Polit­i­cally Black.

“I worked as a jour­nal­ist for a year after col­lege and then decided I wanted to become an organizer.” — Barack Obama

Barack, Michelle, and ter­ror­ist Berna­dine Dohrn worked together as men­tors in 2000

Michelle Obama shows up repeat­edly in mate­ri­als. For exam­ple, she was a plan­ner for a 10th Anniver­sary Prom for the Com­mu­nity Renewal Soci­ety, part of Chicago School Reform. Also on the lists are the Ayers, Klonsky’s, and other usual sus­pects from Barack’s cir­cle of Chicago associates.

Barack worked with Father Michael Pfleger (See pic­ture from 2000)

What is this 2001 Search Engine
This is an edited copy of Google’s 2001 index. The search engine index from 2001is linked to the edited archive at Inter­net Archive. Yes, both are fil­tered and, thus, incomplete.

Google Uncov­ers Itself as Biased Arbiter of Infor­ma­tion
In offer­ing this win­dow into 2001, flawed as it might be, Google inad­ver­tently unmasks their nefar­i­ous role in deliv­er­ing us to 1984.

1. If there has ever been a con­firmed request to remove a given web page, we’ve removed it from the 2001 index.
2. The results you see here are indeed taken from our Jan­u­ary 2001 index, but as noted above, we’ve removed a fair num­ber of results.
3. If you clicked on the link to today’s ver­sion of the web­page, please con­tact the web­site owner directly to take down the bad con­tent. If you clicked on the link to the Inter­net Archive’s ver­sion, you can con­tact the Inter­net Archive. If you think the search result should be removed from our Google 2001 search index due to inap­pro­pri­ate con­tent or sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, please let us know.

How long will this index be avail­able? One month. (and even less for infor­ma­tion removed upon request)

One can only imag­ine that today’s index is as equally com­pro­mised. To see the bias at Google, browse through their own blog at http://​google​blog​.blogspot​.com/.

And at The Inter­net Archive, they also read­ily fil­ter their col­lec­tion: “The Inter­net Archive is not inter­ested in pre­serv­ing or offer­ing access to Web sites or other Inter­net doc­u­ments of per­sons who do not want their mate­ri­als in the col­lec­tion.” As with Google, they offer steps to have items removed from the collection.

The Chal­lenge to Find What is There

Google and the Inter­net Archive offer us, even if flawed and fil­tered, a win­dow into the past that is shock­ing and sober­ing because we’ve become so depen­dent upon Inter­net search engines that we’ve often for­got­ten to ques­tion it’s com­plete­ness or accu­racy. These indexes are fil­ters and they do not nec­es­sar­ily show us what we want to find but rather what some­one else wants us to find or, worse, not find.

In the case of Barack Obama, we find details that he has care­fully scrubbed from his cur­rent per­sona as he runs for pres­i­dent. But he can­not hide from the truth. As Obama has shrouded him­self in lies, mis­state­ments, and omis­sions, it is up to us, the voter, to fer­ret out the truth, which is often in plain sight.

With Google and other Inter­net orga­ni­za­tions con­trol­ling access to infor­ma­tion it is impor­tant to remem­ber how to do real research through mul­ti­ple sources as over depen­dence on any one source is dan­ger­ous. I was a grad­u­ate stu­dent of his­tory in the 1980s, learn­ing to do research the hard way, with phys­i­cal indexes, books, printed media, and micro­film or micro­fiche. It is past time to brush off those old skills.

And, as a final thought and rec­om­men­da­tion, as you do your own research and read­ing, please keep in mind that the Google index is only up for a few more days and the data you find today may be gone tomor­row. Do screen cap­tures of every­thing you find of inter­est. Where data isn’t acces­si­ble, write down what you can and go to the library to retrieve it. Finally, as I’ll write in a near future post, there are other search engines and Inter­net archives that might prove help­ful in your efforts.

Cross-​posted at NoQuar​terUSA​.net.

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