Stop what you're doing and read this.
Holy.
fukk.
Twitter's Trump-i-ness: Twitter, Russia and Silicon Valley's "Persian Mafia", by Jay McKenzie (@JamesFourM)
Twitter’s Trump-i-ness: Twitter, Russia and Silicon Valley’s “Persian Mafia”, by Jay McKenzie (@JamesFourM)
16OCTBy
activemeasure
As was discussed in a
previous article, the Executive Chairman of
Twitter is Omid Kordestani. In 1978, Omid Kordestani left Iran and
moved to San Jose, California which is, of course, the heart of Silicon Valley itself.
While it may seem logical then that
Kordestani ended up in the tech industry, his success certainly didn’t look guaranteed. However, he spent a successful decade at Google and became Executive chairman of
Twitter in 2015.
Kordestani is a member of what his friend Pejman Nozad recently
described as ‘The Persian Mafia in Tech’. What’s interesting is looking at the Persian Mafia’s interactions with the
PayPal Mafia, and in particular one of that group’s success stories, Peter Thiel.
Let’s talk about them.
Omid Kordestani, Saeed Amidi and Pejman Nozad, all members of the Persian Mafia in Tech, discuss their friendship and relationship to Peter Thiel in
this article from 2007.
Saeed Amidi’s family left Iran for San Jose, California as well. Saeed Amidi and his family
rented office space to PayPal in its early days, after briefly doing the same for Google. They were convinced to invest in PayPal by Peter Thiel, and they
made millions together as a result.
Pejman Nozad first job in America was at Medallion Rug Gallery, which was owned and operated by
Omir Amidi, Saeed’s father. Saeed Amidi has also
described Twitter Executive Chairman Omir Kordestani as a, “really good friend”. Here are Pejman Nozad and Omid Kordestani
working together in July of 2017.
The Silicon Valley Bank connection.
Pejman Nozad is actively involved in the business of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The bank has repeatedly referenced Nozad on its
Twitter feed recently.
Silicon Valley Bank states on their
website, “No one understands startups like Silicon Valley Bank.” A 2012 piece in
Fortune about Silicon Valley Bank used their tagline, ‘Bank like a venture capitalist’. There’s a reason this strategy is described as ‘boutique banking’, if the rest of the world worked off this model, the world economy would collapse on roughly a weekly basis.
Silicon Valley Bank has done quite well for itself, however, resisting tradition. In fact, it almost seems like they
encourage risky ventures. How, then, are their
profit margins so high? Could it be because tech start-ups are a means to
launder dirty money? It’s difficult to say, but it may not be long until
we find out, thanks to Bob Mueller’s investigation. What is interesting, though, is
SVB’s close association with Russia’s Sberbank, a bank which is currently under US sanctions. It’s also interesting that Trump Tower Moscow’s development partner was
funded by Sberbank in its previous projects.
If all of this seems fanciful, consider the state of Silicon Valley today. When the same people provide the initial investment in a start-up as the ones who ultimately purchase the company outright, who’s to say what’s exactly going on? We may assume there are proper checks in place, but there are
warning signs that this simply isn’t the case.
Silicon Valley Bank’s founder and Mesosphere.
In any case, Silicon Valley Bank was
founded in 1983 also in San Jose, California by Roger V. Smith. In 2014, Smith
joined mobile shopping app Just Sales in 2014. At the same time, former
Twitter engineer Florian Leibert joined Just Sales as well. Leibert is also the CEO and Co-Founder of a company called Mesosphere.
One of the initial investors in
Mesosphere was
Andreessen Horowitz. In 2014, they led Series A funding of Mesosphere,
investing $10.5 million in the company. Series C investment round in March 2016 was led by Hewlett Packer Enterprise (HPE)–where Marc Andreessen is on the board–and
raised $73.5 million for Mesosphere. Series B funding amounted to $36 million. It was led by Khosla Ventures, but Andreessen Horowitz
provided additional funding as well.
Clearly, Andreessen Horowitz is heavily involved in Mesosphere. A company founded by Florian Leibert, who has direct links to
Twitter and the founder of Silicon Valley Bank.
Facebook and
Twitter.
The Russian Connection.
Russian-American Yuri Milner, who has
links to Russian Intelligence officials,
invested $800 million in Twitterin 2011. Milner’s company, DST Global (which later changed its name to mail.ru) also
invested $400 million in Zynga and
Facebook. Yuri Milner’s essentially
bought his way into Silicon Valley, and he did this with the help of his billionaire benefactor and business partner, Alisher Usmanov. It was Usmanov who spent several years in jail in Uzbekistan (the ruling was eventually overturned), and he has
apparent ties to the Russian mob.
It’s important to note this point as well. One does not conduct corporate business in Russia without the approval of the Kremlin. Russia is a mafia state. There is no distinction between the mob and the government.
While this is a fact the media sometimes forgets, know this:
The man who coined the term ‘Mafia State’, Alexander Litvinenko, was himself
poisoned with polonium for trying to expose this very fact to the rest of the world.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
