Showing posts with label bullying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bullying. Show all posts

Cummings need not resign - they should all be arrested for gross misfeasance in public office.

Arrest them all to prevent future mass fatality.
~
A basic principle of good public health is to learn from the failures and the successes of others facing the same health problem in order to improve outcomes and avoid avoidable harms.

Learning from experience, from others failures and their successes.


A number of British and European Public Health professionals issued a report, published in The Lancet, on February 19.


This is what they said:

"We are public health scientists who have closely followed the emergence of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and are deeply concerned about its impact on global health and wellbeing. 

We have watched as the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China, in particular, have worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak, put in place significant measures to reduce its impact, and share their results transparently with the global health community. 


This effort has been remarkable.
We sign this statement in solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak. We are all in this together, with our Chinese counterparts in the forefront, against this new viral threat."

The WHO were in country in China, and were in the process of taking evidence for a final report on the Wuhan situation at the same time. They were in China between 14th and 24th of February, and this is from their final report.


"Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat.

At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities. Despite ongoing outbreaks in their own areas, Governors and Mayors have continued to send thousands of health care workers and tons of vital PPE supplies into Hubei province and Wuhan city.

At the individual level, the Chinese people have reacted to this outbreak with courage and conviction. They have accepted and adhered to the starkest of containment measures – whether the suspension of public gatherings, the month-long ‘stay at home’ advisories or prohibitions on travel. 
Throughout an intensive 9-days of site visits across China, in frank discussions from the level of local community mobilizers and frontline health care providers to top scientists, Governors and Mayors, the Joint Mission was struck by the sincerity and dedication that each brings to this COVID-19 response."

and

"
China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. A particularly compelling statistic is that on the first day of the advance team’s work there were 2478 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in China. Two weeks later, on the final day of this Mission, China reported 409 newly confirmed cases. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real."


The evidence is unequivocal.


The Chinese Government and their health officials did the best possible job under the circumstances. They stopped the uncontrolled epidemic within China. South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong acted rapidly to prevent uncontrolled community transmission.


This begs the question - Why did the UK Government, SAGE and Public Health England ignore the experience and learning from real lived social and material data and the practical evidence from the Chinese handling of the epidemic? Why did they ignore the success of the early and rapid action of other East Asian States? Our bodies are biologically no different, our capitalist, urban consumer cultures are all similar.

Why did the UK Government try do the worst job possible under the circumstances, starting off with herd immunity, (which some are still touting as a reasonable possibility based on modelling, rather than the actual material experience) until that was objected to by independent health professionals within the UK,based on the impact it would have in terms of deaths of vulnerable people, and was publicly stood back from in response to the visceral reaction of the general public to that revelation, which was disgust?

Why then did they persist with policies that guaranteed a slow spread of the infection, and thus ensure a higher death toll upon UK Citizens, than if they had followed the experience of the Chinese, the Taiwanese, the South Koreans, the Vietnamese and why did they choose to not do as many other countries around the Earth have done?

This cannot be put down to incompetence.

The UK Government policy was and remains deliberate and intentional.

What irks me most about calls for the resignation of  Dominic Cummings over the past few days for his apparent breach of UK Government regulations is that they are a feeble, weak-kneed, cowardly response to the situation that he, SAGE, the Prime Minister Johnson, the Cabinet, the Behavioural Insights Teams, the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Advisor have deliberately created, as the directors of UK public policy on Corona Virus.


Arrest these people!

Really - think carefully about what they have done and are doing, and the adverse affects of their actions.

They have made a lethal mountain of an infectious mole hill.


They have lied.

They have misled the public.

They have used profoundly manipulative tactics to sway peoples attitudes, including emotional black mail, passive aggressive management tactics, bullying and gaslighting.

They have acted irresponsibly and caused untold, avoidable lethal harm to tens of thousands of UK citizens.

They have caused immense economic harm to millions of UK citizens.

The lies, the emotional blackmail, the gaslighting, the misleading statements, even the idiotic counting two gloves, or counting two parts of same test as two tests - all of these are abuses of their positions of power. All of these dishonesty's are signals of malign intent. Once or twice might be considered a reaction, but the fact is these are multiple occurrences, and clear and consistent pattern of dishonesty and the impact of the policies is extensive harm causation, avoidable deaths. That is criminal in essence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misfeasance_in_public_office

"Generally, a civil defendant will be liable for misfeasance if the defendant owed a duty of care toward the plaintiff, the defendant breached that duty of care by improperly performing a legal act, and the improper performance resulted in harm to the plaintiff."

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office

The courts have been reluctant to provide a detailed definition of a public officer. The case law contains an element of circularity, in that the cases tend to define a public officer as a person who carries out a public duty or has an office of trust. What may constitute a public duty or an office of trust must therefore be inferred from the facts of particular cases. 
The judgment of Lord Mansfield in R v Bembridge (1783) 3 Doug KB 32 refers to a public officer having: 
'… an office of trust concerning the public, especially if attended with profit ... by whomever and in whatever way the officer is appointed'. 

These. then, above and below, are among the many harms for which the UK Government and it's high officials are liable for, as individuals and as officials.

They have exacerbated many pre-existing health conditions and mental health issues for millions of UK citizens, in pursuit of a toxic mythical herd immunity policy. Slow the spread is not stop the spread of the infection.

By imposing a lock down, but without  providing any rational or effective measures at the grass roots level to carry out contact tracing, quarantining of those potentially exposed to the virus, let alone providing earliest possible isolated care and treatment for those who show any signs or symptoms, away from their homes, care homes or other shared accommodation where they would inevitably  spread the infection, in order to stop the community transmission of the infection and protect the larger population., the UK Government policy has caused many, many deaths, directly and indirectly.


Everything the UK Government have done has enabled a slow progression of the infection across the general population, and a rapid spread within care homes and other shared  residential settings.

I  say it again. It amounts to moving towards Herd Immunity by covert means.


The infection is still pretty much out of control, largely invisible.

Two and a half months into the campaign and the UK Government and their media allies are gas-lighting the NHS staff, pretending to provide adequate PPE, knowing they were not,  and are still not, meeting the needs of nursing and care staff across the country, all the while calling the front-line staff  'heroes',
 clapping weekly on a Thursday evening for 2 minutes to mask the cruelty of the imposition - they must continue to work with inadequate protection - even this weekend they are bullying workers and teachers and demanding they return to work in unsafe situations, with vague provisions for 'safety' that are not supported by science or epidemiology, and thus placing the entire community at greater risk than needs be, to 'get back to work'. They are encouraging people to go to beaches and beauty spots, and this is already impacting hospitals in such areas.


To what end?

Whilst there are doing all of that, whilst they are deliberately failing in their duty of care to the health and safety of the people,  as public paid officials, they are bailing out corporations under a cloak of secrecy , investing tax payers cash in unproven AI Health Surveillance, badly designed tracing apps, employing accountancy firms to run testing programs, they are protecting the Tax Havens where trillions of pounds of UK wealth lies beyond taxation reach, they are undermining British small farmers in favour of US style factory farming.

To what end?

Put the two together, and we have corruption and institutional cruelty on a par with the British Empire response to Famine in Ireland, and Famine in India in the mid to late 1800s.

Resign?

No.

They must be arrested for gross misfeasance in public office, leading to tens of thousands of, un-avoided, avoidable deaths of UK citizens. 

This situation is intolerable.

They must be placed on remand until we have resolved the situation - they cannot be granted immunity nor can they be allowed to do any more damage to the UK citizenry.

We must remove these corrupt bullies and charlatans, and install a government led by epidemiology, public health best practice, health and social care best practice and care for the ordinary citizens of this nation above all other considerations - the economy will be stronger when we have suppressed the virus, eliminated it from these islands, and when we can return to an open and safe society, albeit with tight, quarantined borders.

It is a global matter.

Each state must eliminate the virus from within it's population, and maintain quarantined borders until all states are free of the virus. All states have a duty of care to each other in this.

The call by the UN for a global ceasefire is eminently sensible, and reflects that shared duty of care. Trump says no! Johnson says 'I am in step with Trump!' Utterly arrogant war mongers.

Reduced international tourism as states maintain quarantined borders would have some benefits. We could all gain from holidays within our own countries, and learning to not litter the land we love, getting to know, love and nurture it would be a useful exercise in internal economics and international responsibility.


When we have resolved the epidemic,  let us hold another election, a clean election, open and free from the Machiavellian ministrations of  the likes of Cambridge Analytica, the alt-right anger factories of Steve Bannon and Lynton Crosby et al.

Let me also make my position clear. I do not support left or right. I am a-political.

I detest adversarial, bipolar politicking. I see it as a way to perpetuate bullying through artificial power disparities, and  I think it is wholly unsuited to the 21st Century where science, evidence, information access and social solidarity in matters concerning the shared spaces, the commons, are the now normal aspirations of all healthy people.

I am not left, nor am I right. That bird never flew for me. It is a fat, old, flea ridden walking Eagle, so to speak.

I detest bullying of any kind, I abhor emotional blackmail, I am disgusted by political grooming , and really, really dislike manipulation. I am an egalitarian. I have no skin in this situation related to left or right.

As an example of my distaste for manipulation, I coined the term 'political grooming gangs' to describe what I was observing.

More recently, I wrote a blog about Johnson's May 10th passive aggressive management speech.

I also took on Gavin Williamsons's odious Education briefing, where he tried to use emotional blackmail, in public.

----


I wrote a song about Boris Johnson's May 10th Speech :

 Be Alert!


I wrote another song about Jacinda Ardern vs Boris Johnson, Trump, Icke and Jones.


Jacinda and The Little Bugs..





I am a singer/songwriter and a lazy permaculture gardener, as well as a writer.

I suggest we all get up to date with trauma informed approaches, poly-vagal theory and conflict resolution, as well as understanding the tactical dynamics of bullying in politics.

We really have to put a stop to the polarisation tactics of powerful groups that are tearing our communities apart. It is an essential component of justice in all areas.


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.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received



Gavin Williamson's emotional manipulation, his grooming tactics in public view.

"The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerability is one of most vile things any human being can do to another."



Freedom of Speech, abused.

 Gavin Williamson's speech on Saturday 16 May, his Corona Virus Education briefing from 10 Downing Street, was an abuse of the rights of Freedom of Speech. It was a deeply manipulative speech. I want to put it into context in this blog piece.

Let me first lay out a necessary qualification about Freedom of Speech in the Public Domain.

Free Speech

Free Speech is a Responsibility - it is neither an absolute Right or a Privilege.

The Responsibility is to speak honestly, to be evidence based, to be as good a listener as a speaker and to acknowledge what is verified, reliable and true as such, and to also acknowledge beliefs as made up, as guess-work at the very best.

Freedom of Speech is not a right to promote beliefs over evidence in matters concerning the shared commons.

Freedom of Speech is not a right to groom, manipulate or exploit others through use of language and various logical fallacies...

Freedom of Speech abused.

The Freedom Movement protesters in Hyde Park and elsewhere were a 'welcome' media distraction from Gavin Williamson's 'briefing' against teachers, parents, children and health and safety common sense. Their case was a mistaken interpretation of the meaning of Freedom of Speech and both they and the Secretary for Education denied the social responsibility inherent in the right to free speech. The distraction was welcome from the point of view of the Government. A minor incident elevated to a mass media 'news' story.

A few 5G obsessed anti-vaxxers, freedom campaigners and assorted conTheory spreaders gathered in Hyde Park, near speakers corner, an historical location for Free Speech in Public, to spout nonsense in  public, and to bully , manipulate and groom others to their beleif system and at the same time they chose to deliberately breach social distancing guidelines and regulations whichare necessary to stop the spread of the virus.

The Freedom Movement UK protesters were speaking futile nonsense to power. And asking to be arrested, as a piece of political street theatre. They were in fact fufilling Johnsons policy objective - more spread towards mythical Herd Immunity.

A few of the 200 or so 'activists' were arrested for potentially spreading an infectious disease, after receiving two verbal warnings to disperse under the Corona Virus regulations. The police action was rough, because the protesters resisted and that made for great video evidence of 'state suppression'.

The protesters will claim that their rights to Free Speech were being trampled upon. They were not arrested for anything they said. No surpirse there - reality is hardly their logical foundation.

They are as narcissistic as those they claim to oppose. Fodder for the narrative that the lock down is an injustice.

Lock down injustice.

Which it is, yet not in the way these protesters claim. Reality is much more detailed than their futile and ill-informed caricature allows.

The injustice inherent in lock down as it is being played out in the UK is that it is not being deployed to stop the spread of infection, to lead towards eradicating the viral spread within the UK population in order to protect the significant population of vulnerable people. It is being deployed to guarantee a slow spread of the infection, which does not protect the vulnerable.

That is utterly repugnant, and it is a political and economic choice of policy that undermines the health and safety of at the 11.5 million UK citizens with chronic disease conditions, and in particular the elderly in care homes and those with multiple conditions.

Education and Work.

Teachers Unions have been speaking truth to power since March, and continuing through April, on into May  and  continuing this week, by asking direct and pertinent questions about health and safety of returning to school in the midst of an uncontrolled epidemic.

Whilst the lock down has slowed the community transmission rate in London, elsewhere it is rising.

The infection spread is still out of control.

 Under control means we know where the virus has been, we know where it is and we have suppressed transmission to the degree that there have been no new cases of infection for at least two days or more. None of these are in place as I write. The spread of infection is uncontrolled.

The teachers unions are asking the Government to present their scientific and public health evidence that proves that it is safe to return children to school by asking clearly worded questions, presenting the scientific evidence their questions are based on. The Government is failing to respond in kind.

The teachers concerns are laid out in the 5 tests they set for safe re-opening of schools.

They have also issued a substantial document laying out the detail of their questions, a document which is also a useful learning guide for anyone interested in the matter, as it poses the questions, outlines the back ground of their concerns, presents the scientific evidence and study papers that their concerns are based on.

The Government has not responded in kind.

The British Medical Association has come out in full support of the teachers unions. Their concerns are justified, they are medically rational, a phrase Boris Johnson might be familiar with in the negation of that same term, from his speech on February 3rd in Greenwich.

Instead the Government and their advisors are spinning the numbers, they are painting a false picture of the risk of infection emerging within schools. The details are laid out on this blog, Corona Maths.

"Dr Jenny Harries went even further in order to justify the opening of schools on 1st June by saying “There’s a lot of anxiety I think around this but people need to think through – in an average infant school with 100 children the likelihood of anybody having this disease is very small and diminishing with time.”
Let’s be clear about this.
That statement is absolutely 100% untrue statistically.  
The likelihood is not small and there is no evidence that that likelihood will diminish with time.  So let’s explore what the implications for schools really are.

The Implications for Schools


She is an epidemiologist who should have a grasp of statistics so I can only assume that she is toeing a political line and that what she has said is deliberate rather than accidental."





The risk in returning children to school is still very, very high.  The spread of infection, the  incidence of community transmission is not under control,not by any standard measurement, and  teachers are being bullied, workers are being bullied whilst many businesses are being stressed by lack of adequate economic support, bad policy decisions an d we are all subjected to misleading public narratives.

Emotional Blackmail and Gaslighting.

The Teachers Unions and the BMA were publicly gas-lighted by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, in his briefing from 10 Downing Street, Saturday 16th May.

Williamson attempted to groom the general public, the students and the parents into enrolling in an attack on the teachers.

Here is the video of Gavin Williamson's odious speech.


He carried out a classic grooming exercise in full public view.

He intruded into circle of trust, he primed his audience, he then used emotional blackmail to bind them in to his agenda, and then launched a series of snide attacks where he deployed emotional triggers,  laid guilt trips aimed at teachers unions and the BMA, to undermine in the public view their evidence based concerns about health and safety of the teachers, the children, their parents and elder relatives. Machiavellian to the core.

Like he really cares about vulnerable children, or vulnerable adults, having voted for policies that are proven to have caused harm to vulnerable during the past few years, even when evidence was presented of those harms.

"School is the safest place for children from unhappy homes."  Emotional black mail.

"School re-opening is based on best scientific advice." Twaddle. They are unwilling to present that evidence. It does not exist.

Evil is as evil does.

Here is the transcript of that speech.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretarys-statement-on-coronavirus-covid-19-16-may

On getting children into school as soon as possible.

Here I will examine some of his statements, and indicate the tactics.

"This is particularly important for vulnerable and disadvantaged young people. There are some who would like to delay the wider opening of schools."

*( speaking to the wider electorate, entering into the circle of trust, blatantly lying to do so - schools are already open for vulnerable children - here, and here . and *here *even though many are not turning up where provision has been made for them, presumably because their parents are concerned with the risks of transmission of infection which might be brought back into family homes where vulnerable unwell or elderly adults share homes, a reasonable concern..)

"But there is a consequence to this."

*(Guilt tripping the teachers, frightening the parents, gaslighting the wider public to think teachers are putting selfish concerns ahead of children's well being)

"The longer that schools are closed, the more children miss out. Teachers know this. Teachers know that there are children out there who have not spoken to or played with another child of their own age for the last two months."

 *(guilt tripping the teachers in front of workers, talking about the teachers in the third person to the workers)

"They know there are children from difficult or very unhappy homes for whom school is their happiest place in their week. It’s also the safest place for them to be and it’s thanks to their teachers and the support that their teachers give to them that they are safe and happy."

*(those who are keeping these children out of school by blocking a return are harming these children, - emotional black mail)

The poorest children, the most disadvantaged children, the children who do not always have support they need at home, will be the ones who will fall furthest behind if we keep school gates closed.

*(guilt tripping the teachers in front of the public)

"They are the ones who will miss out on the opportunities and chances in life that we want all children to benefit from what teachers and schools deliver for them."

* (the claim is false, and he implies it is the fault of teachers if these children are failed )

So we’re asking some children to come back from the 1 June. And we are asking schools to adopt a number of strict protective measures.

*( he is asking for children of workers to return  - and he knows the Government have not answered the Teachers Unions evidence based questions on Health and Safety, and that those questions will not be answered in his briefing).

Context.

So to place this into the fullest context,  we must take on board the meaning of the UK Policy of slow spread of the infection, and what it really means, and what motives might lie behind it.

The speech by Johnson last week (May 10th) was about getting workers back to work. 

Protect the economy! Be alert! Get back to work!

He used deliberate, tactically vague instructions to set workers up for a fall, either way - if they are too cautious, they will be blamed for hurting the economy, and their employers will have a leverage to dismiss them, or refuse to support them.  If they take too much risk, they will be blamed for the adverse outcomes.

In order to really push that back to work agenda, more school children must be 'encouraged' to return to school so that parents are free to go to work. If they did not push for this, then at least half of parents would stay home because we know that many families both parents go to work.

There are 4.526,000 families with both parents at work.

That is a substantial number of workers, just over 9 million.

At present furlough is covering  6.3 million workers.

Even if the Government can get half of the parents back to work, they are looking at saving billions every month,  and at the same time they are increasing the potential for more slow spread of the infection, all at the same time.

Why is slow spread so important to this British Government?

What does slow spread really mean and what benefits does it accrue, and to whom?

Why does the UK Government reject the stop the spread, eradicate the virus within the population approach?

It would be utterly foolish to ignore these questions.

Especially when the Education Secretary is prepared to publicly behave in such a profoundly manipulative manner.

I am not personally frightened, as much as I am concerned. I have been very ill, for three weeks in March with lingering sense of infection into mid April. I feel much better now. Nowhere as well as I did before March.

I have gone beyond fear now, I am mostly furious and I also understand anyone who is vulnerable being fearful, not so much of the bug as of the Government and it's reckless behaviour.
,
The media are portraying our concern as fear, as timidity, as way to gaslight us, to bully us into submission.

It's really ugly to look at and see.

What is going on here?


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.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius

https://www.corneilius.net

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous

Boris Johnson, Geoffrey Cox, Donald Trump, Bullying, death threats and a Secret Trade Deal


I witnessed deliberate, calculated bullying in Parliament.

 

General Attorney Geoffrey Cox,  at the despatch box, in The House of Commons, speaking for the Government

Wednesday, 25 Spetember, 11.30 onwards.

What I saw.

What I witnessed..

I watched as Attorny General Geoffrey Cox's polite deftly, and humourusly deflected questioning about the advice he gave the Prime Minister on prorogation. He was not at liberty to pass on any materials, due to a confidentiality issue...

Then, when the questions ceased, and the discussion moved on, I witnessed as Geoffry Cox launch into a polemic rage, his well fed face getting redder and redder, his voice louder and angrier, and with this intimidating behaviour towards the opposition, taking up more space, stretching his arms out, whipping up his own party, and roaring at the opposition, calling  them 'cowards'.

'Cowards'?

He is the coward - he refused to offer up his bad advice.

He refused to bow to the court, claiming to respect it and say  the court was wrong.

Not for the benefit of MPs, but for the benefit of rousing angry misled thugs (a tiny minority, most not actual Brexiteers, just idiots looking for a scrap) on our streets, of whom, as Farage said on three occasions that I am aware of he would "understand if there was violence on the streets if they didn't get Brexiy".

Really - how can that theatrical bullying be considered appropriate in a chamber where legislation, regulation and constituency representation is it's purpose?

Not good.

That was public bullying behaviour.

Tactical public bullying in office.

That needs calling out.

Big time.

Not good at all.

Death Threats

Then later on, the conversation between MP Pauline Sherrif and Prime Minister Boris Johnson concerning the use of the language of betrayal, surrender, sabotage, cowards, traitors etc.,  and it's potential to escalate tension and hatreds, and the reality of death threats being made in increasing frequency against MPs, not least in the court statement of the man who assasinated MP Jo Cox, and those convicted of conspiring to murder MP Rosie Cooper,,,,

And Boris replied "Never before ..... have I heard such Humbug!"

definition : deceptive or false talk or behaviour.
"those comments are sheer humbug"

The Prime Minister just brushed aside her concerns as 'false and deceptive'.

What was that?

That was bullying. straight up.

It was deliberate. It's all deliberate, when Boris Johnson opines in public, it's a script, a tactical weaponised wall of verbiage,  with the corpses of Latin allusion strewn across the rambling of thise Power addict.

All of this just after US President Donald J. Trump announced at the UN, on Monday :

"We are working closely with Boris Johnson on a magnificent new trade deal."


Not 'we are negotiating with the UK Government'.... a new trade deal.

Where is the UK Parliamentary scrutiny or oversight and participation in these 'negotiations'?

Boris has not been negotiating with the EU, he has been negotiating with the US Corporations represented by the US Government, in secrey, in full view.

Taking back control.

"We are working closely with PM Boris Johnson a magnificent new trade deal."

The deals, contracts and legislative package are already written up, ready to roll, bar the official signing ceremonies.

This reminds me of Chile, 1979, when after a manufactured 'crisis' - a violent military coup - a complete legislative package arrived from The Chicago School of Economics outling the internal legislation and external trade deals to NeoLiberalise the entire Chilean Economy.

https://slate.com/business/2016/01/in-chicago-boys-the-story-of-chilean-economists-who-studied-in-america-and-then-remade-their-country.html

Pinochet, Thatcher..... Thatcher entered 10 Downing Street in May 1979.

Pinochet took power on 11th September 1979...

Brexit is a manufactured 'crisis'.

Clear as a bell.

Boris has been 'negotiating' with Trump and the US State, rather than the EU.

They have plans to force through a No-Deal Brexit at any costs...

A brief background of the Chicago Boys : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys

A more detailed account of what happened following the imposition of the Chicago Boys economic plan upon Chile...

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-chicago-boys-in-chile-economic-freedoms-awful-toll/

As and when Corbyn gains office, with even a solid majority, plus support from other social progressives, we will be faced with some serious power struggles - someone will want to make the economy scream.

The Tax Havens that nest English Capital must be protected. Leveson II must not happen. War Crimes investigations and indictments must be thwarted.

There's a lot of work ahead, and we the grass roots will need to robust in defending our  democracy and expanding it.

It must be done, it can be done, and given that the media can make the small seem big, and the big seem invisible, I have a strong feeling that the invisible decent, loving majority will prevail.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Political Grooming Gangs - you should be appalled.

"The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerability is one of most vile things any human being can do to another."


How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan 

 Let's be real here - we ought to be calling out the behaviour of political grooming gangsters.

Update : 6/11/19  An article by Aditya Chakraborrti in The Guardian exemplifies the grooming dynamic in action, in the hands of the Conservative Government. Labour was just as prone to exploiting similar tactics. 

Now We Have Proof : The Government Used Your Money to Lie About Poor People.

An article on Black Isle Media, which shows examples of the ad campaign itself. Very interesting background on this kind of nasty faux news 'journalism'. A government department posting materials posing as news paper articles designed to deflect from the actual harms that departments policy implementation are causing.

https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/11/06/advertising-watchdog-slams-dwp-for-misleading-universal-credit-adverts/

Advertising Watchdog Slams DWP for Misleading Universal Credit Adverts

The DWP ran an ad campaign in The Metro paper, with a budget £225,000 or so, over 9 weeks, that was designed to look like a series of journalistic articles, that were deployed to deflect from evidence that the DWP Sanctions policy was causing harm, that delays built into the way benefits were being run were causing real hardship, food poverty and distress to already vulnerable people - anyone who is faced with a week where they have not enough money to meet basic needs becomes vulnerable pretty quickly and if they are parents or carers, the vulnerability is heightened.

The aim of the campaign was to deflect responsibility away from the Policy just as a UN report on how Austerity policies were harming people who were in need of state support. The campaign mislead readers, by not so subtle blame shifting onto the very people being harmed, the no-income and low income poor, the disabled and the vulnerable in need of state assistance and support. Gaslighting the victimised in public, no less. This amounts to intentional psychological abuse.

From the Guardian article :

"Early this summer, a national newspaper published a string of curious articles. 

Under the logo Universal Credit Uncovered, the features promised readers of the Metro the truth about this most notorious of all benefits. 

The series began with a giant advert wrapped around the cover of the paper, coupled with a four-page spread right in its centre, and continued week upon week for nine weeks. 

Launched by the Department for Work and Pensions, it was an unprecedented attempt to salvage the reputation of a policy that had been attacked by MPs on all sides, plunged families into starvation and homelessness, and driven councils dealing with the fallout to call for its abolition.

That suffering across the country was dismissed by the DWP as “negativity and scaremongering” in an internal memo I saw and reported on here weeks beforehand.

 Signed by three top officials, it described the campaign to the Metro’s 2.5 million daily readers as “very different to anything that we’ve done before”. 

The civil servants crowed over how readers might be deceived into treating the advertorials as independent reporting: 

“The features won’t look or feel like DWP or UC [universal credit] – you won’t see our branding … We want to grab the readers’ attention and make them wonder who has done this ‘UC uncovered’ investigation.”

"What the government has effectively done is use public money to gaslight poor people, denying the reality of what has been done to them. 


In its eagerness to push its gargantuan failure of a welfare policy, it has swept aside the truth and peddled lies. 

Politicians, campaigners and journalists have all pointed out how Rudd and her DWP predecessor Iain Duncan Smith have done so – and each time we have faced breathtaking defensiveness from a Whitehall department that is meant to be working on our behalf, rather than for the Tories."

"We stand at the edge of an election campaign, a period traditionally marked by half-truths, plausible fibs and outright partisan lies.

Yet even amid the discursive sewage that is about to deluge us, this deceit is far different and vastly more serious.

First, that campaign was paid for by taxpayers like you and me. The DWP’s own filings show that £225,000 was paid to the Metro to run ads now declared “misleading”, “unsubstantiated” and “exaggerated”. Almost a quarter of million pounds was taken off us to lie to us."


In essence a tax payer funded operation of a Government Department deploying professional marketing techniques, huge budgets and deliberate tactics to mask a harm causing policy and to scapegoat the people the policy is purporting to serve, even as they are harmed by it.

Think again about the £100 million spent on marketing 'Get Ready for Brexit' - on all commercial radio stations, 24/7, in schools and in every access point they could muster. That budget is 400 times the budget for The Metro campaign.

Political grooming is big business, and big business is benefiting from it whilst ordinary folk are impoverished and dis-empowered by it.

Parliament is aware of this kind of behaviour with regards to 'fake news' yet remains silent when it comes to confronting the Government deployment of this kind of fake news.

Parliamentary Committee Report  into Disinformation and Fake News

"We have always experienced propaganda and politically-aligned bias, which purports to be news, but this activity has taken on new forms and has been hugely magnified by information technology and the ubiquity of social media. In this environment, people are able to accept and give credence to information that reinforces their views, no matter how distorted or inaccurate, while dismissing content with which they do not agree as ‘fake news’.

This has a polarising effect and reduces the common ground on which reasoned debate, based on objective facts, can take place. Much has been said about the coarsening of public debate, but when these factors are brought to bear directly in election campaigns then the very fabric of our democracy is threatened."


Political Grooming Gangsters.

Organised, well funded operations that  target and manipulate peoples cognitive biases, their social wounded-nesses, their insecurities, prejudices and worries, their misunderstandings, cultural conditioning and fears, and do that through public and social media , through marketing, propaganda and media campaigns operating on an industrial scale,  manipulating vulnerable people for ideological, religious, political or economic advantage.

“The fact that governments are paying – using taxpayers’ money – to attempt to manipulate the electorate – regardless of whether or not the methodologies used actually work – speaks volumes about government intentions, their lack of transparency, their disregard of citizens’ agency, their disdain for human rights, lack of respect for civil liberties and utter contempt for anything remotely resembling democratic accountability.”

from an article written by Kitty Jones

It is appalling behaviour. It is not new, we are all very well aware that the use of propaganda has a long and inglorious history.

What is fairly new is that this type of activity has been digitised, which means it has been individualised, it functions with precision targeting - micro targeting - and it has been scaled up in it's invasive and persuasive capabilities, to reach hundreds of millions of individuals, one by one, or in groups, to whisper carefully tested lies into their ears and eyes, based on close study of their fears and cognitive biases.

What is new is that we have a more detailed knowledge of how this works, a detailed paper and money trail.

The quote above is from an article written by Kitty Jones, on the blog 'Politics and Insights'.


map of countries where CA interfered with democratic elections source 

In this piece Kitty Jones has written out, in easy to read English, a wealth of detail on the many companies and shell companies which worked with Cambridge Analytica,  SCL and AggregateIQ as they 'served' various right wing political election campaigns across the Earth's countries.

From Trinidad to Hungary, from the UK to Nigeria, and onto the USA and Brazil, India and others, more than 100 elections. Foreign interference in National Elections. For the money, and the thrills.

Kitty Jone's blog ties it neatly into the pre-existing industry of psychological and emotional marketing, and it's well worth the read.

Good reliable, verified information. Proper journalism.

Edward Bernays

Looking back a century or just so, to New York in the 1920's.

Edward Bernays, a relative of Sigmund Freud,  organised a campaign for a cigarette company who wanted to create and then dominate a new female smoker market.

"Torches of Freedom" was a phrase used to encourage women's smoking by exploiting women's aspirations for a better life during the early twentieth century first-wave feminism in the United States. Cigarettes were described as symbols of emancipation and equality with men. 

The term was first used by psychoanalyst A. A. Brill when describing the natural desire for women to smoke and was used by Edward Bernays to encourage women to smoke in public despite social taboos. Bernays hired women to march while smoking their "torches of freedom" in the Easter Sunday Parade of 1929, which was a significant moment for fighting social barriers for women smokers.

Bill Hicks would have called it going after 'The Freedom Dollar'.

Women were engaged in the struggle to gain the vote, and to assert more rights as democratic equals, and thus women smoking was sold as an act of self liberation, and act of breaking a 'glass ceiling' of sorts. (edit - fast forward to 2020 - just as today, July 7th, refusing to wear a mask while shopping is touted as marker for Freedom Loving Libertarians, and wearing a mask is touted as submissive, sheep like behaviour. Same trick.)

The lady buys and smokes one pack, and the she is pretty much hooked for life. That is the aim of the campaign.

The addict dollar. Endless cash.

The Freedom dollar, endless lateral violence and social division barring the emergence of much needed solidarity.

Edward Bernays : "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized."

The People must be instructed, trained, tamed and organised by wiser people.

This is, of course, a bully's rationalisation. It is bullshit - nasty, Machiavellian, dysfunctional, anti-social invasive abuse, a different strand of indoctrination.

Public Relations.

Marketing.


Cambridge Analytica, Foreign Office Psyops, The Bible, The Daily MailThe Daily Express, Indoctrination, Ideology, Nudge (punishment/reward operand conditioning in UK social welfare programs), Nationalism. War.

Peddling belief for political advantage.

Bill Hicks was correct. I have created this term for this behaviour in relation to political domains.

Political Grooming Gangsters

.
Deliberate, organised, time tabled....


Deliberate targeting known vulnerabilities, insecurities, prejudices, exacerbating them to elicit reactions that are then exploited for political and economic advantage .

Cynical and cruel.

The dehumanisation of poor and low income people who access state benefits and support... a deliberate narrative produced during the legislative process that instituted Austerity...




The wide spread fact of the operation of political grooming must be addressed.

I think was quite correct during the EUref, to be writing and publishing articles that were pointing out that altering legislation on the basis of opinion was unsound, and that the deliberate framing of the question in opinion, rather than evidence, was in fact a set up for politically motivated tactical grooming. 

We now have so much evidence to support this view.

We know that for many years now, political campaigns have targeted specific fringe demographics, including conspiracy theory, nationalism, inter-group perceptions of favour,  far right and xenophobic groups, targeting those groups who would rarely vote, where if one could trigger them into voting out of anger, then they would swing the outcome, if not just merely confuse the issues,

And it worked.

Just like all the other gags the Ruling class pull work. Religion needs your cash!


We cannot have a healthy Democracy when political grooming aimed at a vulnerable population is fully Institutionalised. We cannot have a healthy democracy when public deceit is enabled by sub standard Education, poverty, discrimination and social policy.

There is no healthy democracy where targeting known vulnerabilities to exploit emotional triggers for political gain is a common practice.

Grooming .

I am appalled at the lack of emotional intelligence within the more socialist members of the Labour Party, the Green Party and others, around this. Is it because it is so common place that it is like water to fish, for them?

You should be too. Be appalled, very appalled.

It is quite blatantly and obviously psychological and emotional bullying of the worst kind, with lethal results.


Here's a song I created to articulate the realities of political, social, economic and religious grooming.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.