NSA, phone calls, Carlyle Group and Directory Assistance - WHOA!!

With all of this going on, I got to thinking about little business notices I have seen over the last few years.

I thought about Carlyle buying the company who owned the entire Mexican phone directory.

And then I remembered reading about them buying the company that owned several directory assistance businesses in Colorado.

So I googled 'carlyle group','directory assistance'. Guess who appears to have been quietly buying up Directory Assistance companies for quite some time?

I don't have time to list the thousands of links, but it is worth a look.

Here is a brief sampling (and this is just one page of many):

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%27carlyle+group%27%2C%27directory+assistance%27&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&xargs=0&pstart=1&fr=FP-tab-web-t&b=11

...I'm more worried about election abused, like we saw in Florida in 2004.

Dex Media, Inc. became a fully independent company in September 2003 with the completion of its $7.05 billion sale by Qwest to The Carlyle Group and Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe (the first phase of the sale was completed in November 2002) – a transaction widely noted as the second largest corporate buyout in U.S. history. Dex Media is now the largest privately owned incumbent directory publisher in the world and is the exclusive, official publisher for Qwest Communications International.
http://www.yppa.org/pdf/membership_communications/20040531.html

No one has clean hands, it seems.

we are receiving our information from.

From the same media who is owned by most of the same people who have been promoting this Administration since day one.

But that was back when America was still America.

The thing that worries me is that Dex isn't (or at least wasn't) worth anywhere near 7 billion. It's nothing more than an electronic phone book.. A database and a web front end.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1182391&mesg_id=1182391

I guess the more information the better!

we do in our lives is followed and logged and manipulated doesn't it?

I wonder what would happen if about a million of us started calling directory assistance for numbers in Yemen one day? 5 or 6 calls per person would keep them busy for a while. I am ready to fuck with them, I am sick and tired of this.

I'm doing a unit study on Islam right now and have been inundating my county library system with requests for a variety of materials related to Islam. I ordered a free copy of the Qu'ran on-line and placed a call to the local Islamic Center to ask a question. I'm ready for a pen pal in Saudi Arabia. That ought to seal my fate.

I am not afraid of these guys. At this point they have whatever they need to take every one of us, they have our info and they don't even need a real reason anymore. Why hold back? I grew up in a family who functioned much like this government and I am loathe to take this crap as an adult. Go for it. I went to a Ramadan feast after the fast a few years ago. Yea, they know us all and this freedom we are supposedly spreading was taken from us and no longer exists here. I am really getting quite pissed, not that I was not before. Good for you for doing the study. I, for one, have always believed that learning about others was the best way to learn how to live together on this planet we share. In the past your actions would have been lauded.

I have made no attempt to hide my contempt for this administration and the types of philosophies that govern its actions. I am not a Christian. I have actively campaigned and supported the GOP and far right's competitors. They don't need any more information to classify me as a threat. I am one. Anyone who holds the U.S. Constitution to be a higher power than corporations is a threat. And as you point out, there is no real reason for gathering information anymore. Bush & Co. have already proven that facts are immaterial to determining threat.

Kurdish Library...so perhaps we can all room together at Gitmo!

;)

all call him! I'm certain he would not mind. :crazy:

The sale to Carlyle might have been motivated by carrot and stick. Qwest was having both financial problems, needed to improve the balance sheet, and was also under investigation, some say persecution.

Look at Crowe and what he's involved in and look at the whole spinoff from Kiewit which wound its way over to Bernie Ebbers's operation. My guess is Qwest was whipped and cowed not "doing business with."

...now I'm pissed.

But at least Quest tried.

Not easy to hold out against persecution when you have stockholders.

Why would they want to buy up all the major phone directory companies? Makes me want to vomit.

They are the puppeteers and we are just the dumb puppets naively thinking we have some freedoms left to preserve.

enuff said.....

It's all part of their information grab. Putting names with numbers.


:tinfoilhat:

They purchased European directory assistance provider Conduit for €90m.