This article is about the vulnerability a knowledge gap represents, and what can happen when a knowledge gap is not recognised, and what can happen when a knowledge gap is exploited by a malign actor.
I once thought that I was a Climate Sceptic.
Not because I understood the science - I clearly did not. I was not a climate sceptic.
I was a climate dunce.
I was ‘sceptical’ because I believed the ever present dynamic of war mongering, which is symptomatic of the odious cult of competing industrialised militarised powers and Externalised Costs (a global institutionalised psychopathy), would make global cooperation on action needed to adapt for oncoming climate change practically impossible.
Honesty
Co-operation and honesty are essential to the efficient regulation of toxic institutional behaviour of any kind, on a global scale.
This cannot be done without legislative processes designed to confront harm causation and to support repair of environmental damage, and to prevent further land, air and water pollution. And nothing useful can be done without funding the social material action and support needed to protect people from the avoidable harms ahead.
Poverty must be abolished, to reduce chronic stress and to free up human potential that could be harnessed to the vocational task of repair and recovery, to build a better future for all our children, by taking action, substantive action, in the present.
War as a tool of foreign policy impedes all of that. No question that the adversarial dynamic and the waste of materials, brain power and time of war making impedes healthy action on a range of problems we face, as nations, and as a species.
I was a Climate Change sceptic.
I was a sceptic because I thought the focus on Climate Change was a deliberate distraction from War Mongering. It was obvious to me that the shift to 'the war against terror' (TWAT) was pushed out at the same time as American political concern about Climate Concern went 'mainstream'. For that reason I did not look at the Science of Climate Change much. I was obsessed with my anti-war stance. I wilfully maintained a knowledge gap that I ought not to have.
Bush and Gore
Gore gave way to Bush in 2000. Al Gore ceded to George W Bush without a whimper, to a move by Bush that was clearly illicit. Why did Gore back down, after all the effort?
Gore literally handed the control and the budget for the US Military Machine to Bush. Bush and his sponsors had 'The New American Century' as their global policy document and it was a war mongers charter using war as a tool of global political hegemony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Then Gore went Climate Change.
He did not mention climate change or pollution during his election campaigning.
I do not recall Gore campaigning in the 2000 presidential election on Climate Change, do you?
I thought "that’s too convenient."
I thought the truth about American, British, Russian and Chinese Militarism - and the industrial Wealth Extraction cult that spawned such war mongering - was too inconvenient to be faced up to. That was my 'inconvenient truth' and that enabled me to side line the other 'inconvenient truth'.
Truth is always inconvenient to those whose lies protect their status.
Looking back, I can see the irony in my own position. I thought that there was a stitch up in America to get the war makers into power. I thought then it made perfect sense to orchestrate a clever distraction to take attention away from war makers plans. Hence my ill-informed scepticism. Ill informed because I really did not understand the science that describes Climate Change.
The truth of war is inconvenient.
The wars that were prosecuted after 9/11 were planned long before 9/11.
The plans for War on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were all on the books already. War planners know that it takes years to prepare for war, and that once The War starts, the plans go out the window, because wars do not go according to plan - they go according to who can take the most pain, absorb the most damage and still stand afterwards.
Wars are chaotic and tend to go according to unplanned, and those who can take the most punishment tend to be the one's still standing at the end of combat operations.
Often all sides will claim 'Victory' in spite of the massive trauma innocent civilians are subjected to.
Assad claims victory in Syria, as does the US and Russia. ISIS is still active. The civilians pay the price.
Nobody really 'wins' a war. People survive a war. Many do not. Furthermore, given the prevailing cult of competing powers, one has to understand that no war is an isolated event, they are all part of a larger cultural behavioural dynamic.
I am not a climate sceptic today.
I understand more of the science.
Climate Change is a species level problem. As are war, poverty, racism, misogyny and wealth extraction that is based on externalised costs. They are all part of the same problem.
The issue of War remains a major block to global cooperative action on climate, and many other matters, including Covid.
Remember when the UN called for a cessation of all war activity in early 2020, so that the world could turn together and deal with the pandemic as a collective?
Who rejected that call?
Covid is still telling us "work together for mutual aid, or you are lost."
The Pandemic is not over, in spite of frequent declarations of that fantasy by right wing lunatics in power across USUK and EU.
I was not a climate sceptic: a sceptic understands the science and says 'nope, I see too many holes here so I remain sceptical'. A good sceptic is a well informed sceptic.
I was a Climate Dunce.
I really did not know enough to be sceptical about the scientific claims of Climate Change, either way.
A dunce is not capable of rational scepticism.
I have been a dunce on many, many issues. I am a dunce on a whole range of issues. I know nothing about the biology of venomous frogs.
I knew nothing about SARS, let alone SARSCOV2 back in March 2020, even as I was dealing with a severe infection of SARSCOV2. Ihad not been paying any attention to the news frm China, or Northern Italy, or Spain. I was truly a COVID dunce. Which is why I decided back in March 2020 to look to the experts who know what they are talking about.
Dunces are easy targets for grooming gangsters.
Dunces part with their cash readily if carefully groomed. Knowledge gaps produce vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
The problem is that it’s not the dunces fault when the dunce is being exploited via a vulnerability by a dedicated grooming operation.
Grooming is the activity of targeting a vulnerability and heightening it in order to drive behaviour that can be exploited. The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie that looks at this behaviour.
Grooming to exploit is a double cruelty - rather than help the target heal the vulnerability, the vulnerability is heightened, and then the target is exploited.
The people who exploit others vulnerabilities are really evil. They are as the archetype of the Human Wolf, who preys on the vulnerable. Real wolves are nothing like this, of course.
The Political groomers, the Wolves of Wall Street, are a really serious problem
Political Grooming Gangsters
Study the tactics of Cambridge Analytica, and many, many others.
1. Target - seek out and find - angry, ill-informed, passionate and vocal people, through their online activity. Micro-targeting is enabled by on line activity, where what is called 'behavioural surplus data' can be gathered, analysed and then processed to produce detailed psychometric profiles, which allows those who can see that information to target people quite precisely,on an individual basis, and present curated content to trigger biases, insecurities, hatreds and knowledge gaps.
This is gold dust for advertisers. Predictability is a key goal of advertisers. If I spend X can I guarantee a return of Y?
Predictability is also the currency, the raw material upon which exploitation is built.
2. Heighten and exacerbate the anger or knowledge gaps of those being targeted with content directed to them. Micro targeting allows the grooming operators to measure the targets reactions, fine tune the content, and over time present content to drive or nudge the targets behaviour in ways which can be predicted and exploited.
3. Set up online groups so they can be angry together, chat online about their anger, and form emotional bonds.Ensure they are exposed to a flow of content designed to heighten their biases and affirm their self righteousness. Online contacts can become friends.
4. Set up small real-world meet ups via focus groups, discussion groups, clubs. Form up groups of around 30 people, which can be easily led and managed. Nurture these gatherings so that to the participants, who rarely gather with that many people of similar outlook, the gathering feels like it’s part of a bigger group, part of a larger network, and then part of a movement. This engenders ‘courage’ to take action.
5. Suggest actions, set up local 'activist' groups to carry out the action, start crowd funding to drive bonding, to fund materials and signage, produce professional content supporting the action, organise transport etc..
6. Start with small local actions. Photo and video the events, and ensure these are well set, photogenic. Make small crowds seem bigger. Promote the material by advertising spend. Get targets to write to local officials, to comment on news threads, to share the content. Tell them they are making real change possible. Make it seem bigger than it is. Push for more crowd funding. When people give money they make a deeper emotional commitment. They feel like they are taking action, doing something.
7. Push out more content to deepen anger and self righteousness, especially if the small events draw criticism. Use the criticism to harden the targets positions, deepen their emotional attachment to the cause, heighten their sense of righteousness.
8. Repeat until targets are febrile. Fever pitch. The groomers can see the degree to which targets are enervated, how long they stay up at night, how angry their online exchanges get.
9. Then ask them to raid government or media buildings in larger numbers, appoint some organisers, pay them from the crowd funding, that way the money trail does not lead back to the groomers.
10. Keep the crowd funding going. Someone has to pay the organisers, the copy editors, the graphics people, the video makers : might as well be the victims of the scam.
That’s been done in 68 countries during 100 elections between 2008 and 2016.
By a British firm, Strategic Communications Laboratories, who honed their skills doing ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaigns post 9/11.
Cambridge Analytica was one of their illegitimate children. SCL meets Robert Mercer, and goes to work for various Free Market personality politicians.
Then Trump, Brexit and now Covid misinformation. Many State are engaged in this activity, we are told. I think the bulk of it is being run by Free Market Fundamentalist Oligarchs and their think tanks and minions and operatives.
So what to do?
Grooming is psychologically abusive in and of itself, and the exploitation of people amounts to a second layer of criminality.
We need legislation defining grooming as a criminal offence, an act of profound psychological abuse. We need to impose a criminal penalty for such behaviour.
We need to make that penalty very serious indeed - because grooming is cruel and exploitative. Defining grooming as a criminal offence would make it far less likely that social media platforms and News and Press media would carry such materials. Making them liable for any harms caused by such content would be a useful inducement to avoid such activity, without impeding Free Speech.
Grooming should not be protected by claiming it is Free Speech.
We also need to explain what grooming is to our people, starting now online, in news media and in all our schools.
The best way to prevent people from being groomed is to develop our awareness, our critical thinking skills, our understanding the nature of logical fallacy arguments.
This is part of building socially coherent grass roots political solidarity movements based on evidence, seeking to elect legislators who will bring in legislation and over sight mechanisms to regulate Toxic Industrial practices, to repair harms caused, to prevent new harms. and who will remove the excessive and corrupt influence of Wealth Extraction class from our legislatures and other governing bodies, from our schools and universities, from our media.
Let them influence legislation and other areas, if they wish, but on an equal footing to the citizens and scientific community. Levelling up, as they say.
A short article look at how the Swedish and Norwegian working and middle class curtailed the power of the Oligarchy during the 1930.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/
A study of one strike action by Swedish workers, demonstrating the difficulties they faced at the time. The work of building coherent grass roots political movements is difficult enough, logistically and made much, much more difficult by the violent repression of Oligarchy dominated Governments.
https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/swedish-workers-general-strike-economic-justice-power-shift-dalen-1931
Recent moves by the Westminster Government seem to be preparing for such struggles, by making them illegal, by making electoral participation more difficult, by gerrymandering constituency borders and other tactical plays...
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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