The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
This Tuesday, March 26th, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine and the (illegally) Occupied Territories, working for the United Nations Human Rights Commission, held a press conference to announce confirmation that Israeli MIlitary Assault and Occupation of Gaza has met the first 4 of 5 conditions required to define the action as a Genocide.
The Genocide Convention codifies genocide as “any of the [specified] acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
Accordingly, the crime of genocide comprises two interconnected elements:
(a) The actus reus: the commission of any one or more specific acts against a protected group, namely:
(i) killing members of the group;
(ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(v) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
and
(b) The mens rea: the intent behind the commission of one or more of the above- mentioned acts that must be established, which includes two intertwined elements:
(i) a general intention to carry out the criminal acts (dolus generalis), and
(ii) a specific intention to destroy the target group as such (dolus specialis).
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for for the United Nations Human Rights Commission for Palestine and the (Illegally) Occupied Territories, has asserted, with evidence to support the claim, that Israel and its allies have broken the first four elements of the Genocide Convention, and have fulfilled the mens rea element.
As an elected democratic governance official you represent the total population of the Constituency, irrespective of individuals choice of parties - you represent the people who did not vote for, as much as any other.
As as an elected democratic governance official you are duty bound to uphold the Law, without exception. There is a moral element to this too which you cannot avoid.
I sincerely call upon you, as a constituent whom you represent, to present my concern that the Law regarding genocide is upheld in fully , by His Majesty’s Government and his Majesty’s Opposition and that you represent this in Parliament, as the earliest possible moment, and that you reply to me having done so, with proof of having done so.
I humbly request that you to take the appropriate action(s) to uphold the Law , to do your duty as my political representative, because I cannot walk into Parliament and make my case - that is your job.
I hope that you agree with me that the civilian population of Palestine need every possible action taken to to stop this atrocity, immediately, without any preconditions set that would impede cessation of the genocidal violence being perpetrated upon them, even as I write.
If you fail in this - without adequate explanation - I will consider you to be actively complicit in enabling this Genocide, as a member of the UK Parliament, the Democratic Governing Body of the United Kingdom.
I will take action, with others, within the Constituency to follow up on that, either way, without fear or favour.
I beg you to do the right thing, to not remain silent on this matter, to speak out on my behalf in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Let us stand together in solidarity on this matter.
Yours Sincerely....
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
Frances Haugen's testimony and evidence concerning Facebook and Instagram speaks volumes.
Media communications that target people’s cognitive biases, their insecurities, prejudices and worries, their misunderstandings, cultural conditioning and their fears, studying those conditions, aiming attenuated content that exacerbates those conditions at the targets,
And doing this with intent, in order to drive behavioural change - more on-line time extracted from users, to encouraging addictive behaviour, whilst allowing malign actors access to vulnerable people, inciting hatred, nudging target groups into voting or not voting based on emotional and irrational drivers, increasing sales: all of this is economically or politically exploitative.
This activity is psychological abuse. This activity is grooming.
If we had legislation identifying it, defining it and criminalising it, as psychologically abusive intentional action, then the media providers would be unable to allow such behaviour to be disseminated on their platforms as a revenue stream. Their AI algorithms would have to be written accordingly.
This would not be an inhibition of free speech. This would be protecting vulnerable people from predatory actors.
The asymmetry of power between the State, the Corporation and the individual human being is immense. Legislation is required to prevent bad actors exploiting that power disparity. This is a question of Health and Safety.
Free Speech is, on the citizens side, the responsibility to speak truthfully, publicly and it is also an admonishment to State and other institutional actors to never use their power to harass honest critics, witnesses, whistle-blowers and truth tellers - the State and other powerful institutions must listen to the honest citizen and hear the honest truth.
Frances Haugen is demonstrating the best practice of Free Speech. The Bi-Partisan response is demonstrating the best practice of the State as an ear for the truth.
Make grooming a criminal offence.
Yours Sincerely
Corneilius Crowley, London
open letter short version
To the Editor
Frances Haugen's testimony and evidence concerning Facebook and Instagram speaks volumes.
Media content that targets people’s cognitive biases, in order to drive behavioural change such as encouraging addictive behaviour, inciting hatred, nudging target groups into voting or not voting based on emotional or irrational drivers, increasing sales: all of this is economically or politically exploitative.
This activity is psychological abuse. This activity is grooming.
We need legislation that makes grooming a criminal offence.
This would not be an inhibition of free speech. This would be protecting vulnerable people from predatory actors.
Frances Haugen is demonstrating the best practice of Free Speech. The Bi-Partisan response of Congress is demonstrating the best practice of the State as an ear for the truth.
Make grooming a criminal offence.
Yours sincerely,
Corneilius Crowley London
To be fair and honest, Grooming was already a standard behavioural characteristic of our current system. Grooming is a core element in every hierarchy of wealth, power and violence culture.The online media environment has made it possible to direct grooming content to individuals on their own, exploiting their vulnerabilities, exacerbating fears to drive behavioural modification, which can be exploited politically or economically, whereas prior to the online media environment, propaganda was aimed at larger aggregate groups, and was to some degree more obvious and more cautious.
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
Let us make an honest forum of this English Parliament - people's lives, welfare and businesses depend on this being done!
My previous blog touched on the use of 'apology' as a defence mechanism of the powerful, when they are caught out and asked to account for harms they have occasioned. Dawn Butler has done nothing to apologise for, when she called out some of Johnson's lies in Parliament, yesterday.
All of us living in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have witnessed Boris Johnson, the English Prime Minister, utter outright lies, time and time again. Johnson's reputation as an issuer of lies dates back to his first days in journalism in the early 1980s.
A journalist, Peter Stefeanovic, crafted a short video, laying out some of Johnson's lies, and providing the evidence that these were, indeed, outright lies, which Johnson uttered in Parliament. Peter made the video to put pressure on UK News Media to write about these lies, not least because those lies have enabled political behaviour that has caused hundreds of thousands of fatalities, millions of cases of chronic disease and immense economic harm by recklessly rejecting elimination strategy back in February 2020, and maintaining that 'epidemiologically stupid' policy ever since.
That video has now reached 27 million views. Here it is.
27 MILLION VIEWS! 27 MILLION!!!
Working TOGETHER we have sent a powerful message to UK News shows if they won’t hold this Prime Minister to account for his rampant lying in Parliament we will do it ourselves!
Dawn Butler, MP for Brent, in London stood up in Parliament, on July 22nd, and pointed out some of these lies, and called out Johnson as a liar. In so doing Dawn Butler has broken a rule of the English Parliament, which states that MPs must not use 'unparliamentary language' which includes calling another MP a Liar. There is no offence of lying to the seated, assembled House of Commons. The Speaker asked Ms. Butler, twice, to withdraw her comments. Ms. Butler refused to do so, and the Speaker then ordered Ms. Butler to leave the chamber, and be escorted off the Parliamentary property.
Dawn Butler has done every citizen within the United Kingdom a huge favour, a profound honour.
Here is that exchange.
Ms. Butler has done every citizen living in the UK a huge favour. She has started to break the taboo, to weaken the spell.
Here is Ms. Butlers statement to Bylinetimes TV.
Here it is, everyone. @DawnButlerBrent’s exclusive statement for Byline TV on today’s events in Parliament.
She called Boris Johnson a liar and was thrown out for it - but decided it had to be done to highlight the erosion of our democracy. pic.twitter.com/dqTBjutKSR
I want every MP, in every Party, who understands that Johnson's lies have caused avoidable deaths, his lies and the lies of this Government have led to avoidable chronic disease for millions of citizens, the lies of this Government have ruined businesses, to stand up, and to call the lies out, in defence of his or her constituents right to health, as a matter of duty of care - or lose their seat, never to return.
Johnson is not the only one, but we must start somewhere.
I would urge Conservative MPs to take the bully by the horns, I would suggest that it is much better to be fired by a liar Prime Minister, whose lies have caused so much avoidable harm, and be recorded in history as a genuinely honourable MP than remain seated in that situation, supporting such odious harm causation.
I think that would be a good advert for each and every MPs next election campaign.
Honest History is a political and social good.
So let's take a quick and honest look at the issue of lies uttered in the English Parliament, Commons and Lords, and understand why it has been an essential part of Empire, Oligarchy and the Ruling Class to lie to the people of England, and to our legislators.
1. The English Parliament has never been fundamentally honourable. Operating as a hierarchy of Wealth, Power and Violence, it cannot, by definition and intent, operate with honesty, transparency and probity. Some honourable MPs have sat within it. yes. The presence of honourable people within a dishonest forum does not make that forum honest, especially if they are prohibited from calling out those who are lying. by a rule that stipulates doing so as 'disorderly conduct' which avoids the issue of the actual lie being referred to.
2. Lying is normalised by the English State, and this has always been the case. The State must lie to protect State Secrets among other things.
3. Read Late Victorian Holocausts and examine Hansard during the Irish and Bengali Famines. There are many, many lies told as truth to mislead the parliamentarians and the public.
8. Dawn Butler is breaking the spell. Let's all do this together, all of us. Let us take every step to confront the Bullies and the Liars, and let us make Parliament and politics more honest, and thus safer for the people it is meant to serve, in terms of duty of care to a whole population.
9. I want each constituent across England to speak, write, tweet and text every MP, in every Party, who understands that Johnson's lies have caused death, chronic disease and ruined businesses, to demand your representative in Parliament must stand up, and call the lies out, or lose their seat, never to return. Johnson is not the only one, but we must start somewhere. Start here, start now.
#TruthSetsUsFree
10. Let us make it a criminal offence to lie in every deliberative governance setting, from the local Parish council to Parliament. If the lie is proven to be malicious, then make it a mandatory 10 year sentence, with no parole, as the most serious indictment.
There can be no excuse for anyone undermining the process of deliberative governance and law making by lying or by any other action with the intent to mislead, manipulate or groom the intended audience.
That is a total betrayal of the trust inherent in Democratic Governance.
#JohnsonsLiesKill
Let us make an honest forum of this English Parliament - people's lives, welfare and businesses depend on this being done!
Here are two more of my songs, about confronting the Bullies, because we the decent majority of human beings really need to confront this cultural adverse behaviour now, in order to generate the national and international legislative and practical co-operation needed to handle climate change, environment degradation, structural poverty, pollution, war fare and other pressing problems.
These problems that every single one of us are facing right now, right here, will not be resolved unless we all build social human solidarity. Honesty in our legislatures is the key.
I am 62, and it is probable that I will not live to see the problems worsen, I will not be around when my grandchildren are faced with extreme situations in terms of climate, environment, warfare, poverty etc., and I could claim none of this is going to be my problem, it will not affect me. I know that that is such a selfish, myopic stance that I would be utterly disgusted with myself if I was to assume that. How totally immature!
No, we adults, every single one of us, owe a debt forward to all successive generations to try our very best to clean up any mess we have been part of making. That is real adulthood.
