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.
Showing posts with label cambridge analytica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cambridge analytica. Show all posts
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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?
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 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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
“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
But this article in the Guardian is edging closer to the issue.
"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."
===
To the Editor
Sir/Madam
.
Organised, well funded media communications operations that target and manipulate peoples
social woundednesses, their insecurities, prejudices and fears through public, social and private
media, through marketing, and propaganda, and through lobby campaigns operating on an
industrial scale: in essence manipulating vulnerable people for ideological,
religious, political or economic exploitation.
It is appalling behaviour.
It is abuse.
If one were to behave that way within a relationship, it would be considered utterly abusive.
It is not new. Edward Bernays has a lot to answer for.
What is new is that we have a much more detailed knowledge of how this works, a detailed personal, paper and money trail.
Let's be real here - let us be calling out the behaviour of these political grooming gangsters.
And
let us not take the easy route of blaming social media - seek out the
people and companies who design these targeted campaigns, and demand
they account for their abusive behaviour.
The media can do without their business.
The people can do without being triggered and manipulated.
Our politics can be cleaner, honest and worthy.
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 honest, responsive to the evidence we find, and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges.
It's not a matter of Left vs Right, it is a question of from Institutionalised to Humanised. - it is not an adversarial process!
"The study of psychological trauma has a curious history - one of episodic amnesia. Periods of active investigation have alternated with periods of oblivion. Repeatedly in the last century, similar lines of inquiry have been taken up and abruptly abandoned, only to be rediscovered much later. Classic documents of 50 or 100 years ago often read like contemporary works. Though the field has in fact an abundant and rich tradition, it has been periodically forgotten and must be periodically reclaimed.
This intermittent amnesia is not the result of ordinary changes in fashion that affect any intellectual pursuit. The study of psychological trauma does not languish for lack of interest. Rather, the subject provokes such intense controversy that it periodically becomes anathema. The study of trauma has repeatedly led into the realms of the unthinkable and foundered on fundamental questions of belief.
To study psychological trauma is to come face to face with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature (behaviour). To study psychological trauma is to bearing witness to horrible events.
When events are natural disasters or 'acts of God' those who bear witness sympathise readily with the victim. But when traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim(ised) and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. The perpetrator appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victimised, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim(ised) demands action, engagement, remembering.
Leo Eitinger, a psychiatrist who has studied survivors of Nazi concentration camps, describes the cruel conflict of interest between victim(ised) and bystander: "War and victims are something the community wants to forget; a veil of oblivion is drawn of everything painful and unpleasant."
In order to escape accountability for crimes,the perpetrators do everything in their power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrators first line of defence. If secrecy fails the perpetrator attacks the credibility of the victimised who speak out. If that fails, the perpetrator tries to make sure no one listens.
After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies; it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon themselves; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on."
In the UK, with regards to the Invasion of Iraq these words ring out as a clarion call above and beyond the petty concerns of Brexit; they also ring out to remind us all that Austerity kills vulnerable people and that we bystanders, all of us taxpayers, each and everyone of us, without exception, have a role to play in confronting both of these atrocities - the murder of a nation, and the murder of a nations most vulnerable citizens, and many more and we have a role in preventing future atrocities.
We cannot compare the deaths of tens of thousands of vulnerable people induced by deliberate chronic economic distress with the destruction of an entire countries civil infrastructure and a war that killed a million people, maimed many more and orphaned 4 million children.
We can draw parallels, because the atrocious behaviour of powerful interests is in direct conflict with the needs of ordinary people and at the same time ordinary people, as bystanders are dis-empowered and urged to do nothing to undermine those powerful interests.
The British public are permitted and encouraged to to protest fracking, CO2 in the atmosphere yet totally inhibited when it comes to prosecutions of War Crimes (Iraq) and Crimes against Humanity (UN report on the rights of disabled people in the UK).
Racism, human progress vs evolution and adaptation.
Racism is always top down...
The origins of Cultural, Scientific Racism and Legal Racism are with the elites, the intellectual classes, the ruling oligarchy, who taught, promoted and legislated (legalised) racism reinforcing it through applied trauma and reward, thus normalising and institutionalising the practices of Racism.
Racism has never emerged from the grass roots.
Trump, and others like him who represent Power (and who is himself a traumatised child-adult) say things in public that encourages ordinary folk who are racists by social conditioning and learning (and who are powerless by comparison, and who feel that dis-empowerment and are frustrated by it) to 'come out', and they do, so that they too can feel powerful, superior... and can assuage the pain of their own powerlessness.
The majority of grass roots 'racists' are groomed into that way of thinking and feeling, precisely because they can be triggered to assault other grass roots people.
50 years ago, this week the US Government passed laws banning segregation. However, they did not teach honest histories in school to show the
people how the colonial British invented Race, using the Bible, the
pulpit, pamphlets, broadsheets and then Institutionalised Racism as a
means to ensure the working poor, the slaves and the native peoples
would not rise to defeat their oppressors but would fight with each
other for their place in the hierarchy...
Laws are never enough, they can easily be broken, therefore honesty in education is critical for prevention.
Hence, until parents demand honesty in education, Racist views will perpetuate to be used by power to divide the people
Australian Aboriginals legally described as Fauna until 1967 - do you understand what that actually means?
The Ruling class defining for everyone the status of the people who are the ancient inhabitants of Australia....
"Animals!"
"Cave Men", "Ug Ug".
These are terms I hear from 'well educated' people all the time....
They have been educated to describe ancient egalitarian peoples in that way as part of a trajectory of progress and evolution that leads to the current dominant culture of industrialised militarised power and technology as being the apex of evolutionary progress. with a bright future in the stars....
No. That is a lie.
I am a biological organism, and I am ancient design: to be co-operative, happy, loving, empathetic, robustly healthy as part of a social community that is fully part of the habitat..
There is no need for further 'evolution' or progress in this regard..
Does an Elephant herd need to 'evolve' further, to progress to become better Elephants?
Do Trees and Fungi need to 'improve' themselves?
No.
Evolution has nothing to do with 'progress' - evolution is about responding to a dynamic environment....
Industrial Culture is a disease state, a rape of life itself.
Which is why fighting for survival does not work, even though resistance is a natural response, it cannot win. The struggle for survival is not a biological reality, it is a social construct of all hierarchically violent cultures.
The Industrial Rapist will not stop, and it is only the Citizens of the Industrial Culture who could stop that culture from the act of raping the Earth's habitats - if we understood, if we have the courage, solidarity and empathy to live that understanding.
This is why I write.
Who will stop Bolsanaro and the Evangelical Movement tied into the Oligarchy?
Who will stop British Weapons makers from supplying Saudi War planes so that they can continue to bomb Yemeni civilians?
Who will stop the British and American States from funding violent militia?
Who will stop Boris Johnson spending £100 million of Tax payers funds on a marketing campaign - grooming that part of the electorate that are susceptible to being groomed via their vulnerabilities, triggering that part that can be enraged, just to divide and conquer?
Who?
The Healers.
Courage rather than fear.
Knowledge rather than belief.
Recovery rather than progress.
This is hard work, it is terrifying work, and yet what alternative is there?
For me, none.
For many others a whole host of reasons determine whether we act or not.
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.
“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
I just watched 'The Great Hack' on Netflix.
I watched it twice, just to make sure I was clear on what I thought it was, and editing this months later, I have to adjust my position, I have more information.
Now on 24th June 2020, having read 'Zucked', I am about to start on Christopher Wylie's 'Mindf*ck'.
I will be reappraising my stance as a result and will edit this piece, or write a part two, as a follow up, to show what I am learning as I travel.
The online user-content-creator social media in general is an advertisers landscape : We create content on our timelines, that content tells facebook a lot about our psychologies.
Google+, Youtube, Amazon and Facebook's management and business model, the techniques they use to expand their business, and their willingness to make advertising revenue by selling access to their users psychologies, with intimate specificity through micro-targeting.
The lure to advertisers is founded on intimate psychological data gathering of the users likes, dislikes, key strokes, reactions, engagements, fears, rages etc, which users agree to, even if we do not fully understand what that means. As Bill Hick put it they are working ' the outrage dollar' or the 'fear dollar' ...
It is true Facebook does not sell your data - it is too valuable a resource for them. They hold that data and it is their feedstock for advertisers seeking to reach precise target groups. Facebook also allows the advertisers to work on any targeted group, to observe how effective their adverts are, what ways targets are responding to various versions of the content, and it enables them to use that information in real time to refine the content and enhance the effectiveness of the advertisments.
This is relatively innocent, until a bad actor pays to target deliberately manipulative content at specific groups of vulnerable people, and enhance that for political, ideological or economic gain. And when the bad actor is spending millions of dollars a week, or billions in an election, all classed as 'advertising' then the platform becomes a vector of abuse. The platform does not create the abuse, it allows the abuse to occur. These Companies have no functional ethical or moral code. They permit all the tactics of narcissistic bullying across their platforms, knowing it causes real harm, under the fig leaf of 'freedom of speech'. That is the problem. A bit like The Vatican. Bill Hicks was on point in this beautiful routine.
They - the social media giants - are not the origin of such behaviours.
Most official News and Press media and all entertainment and all marketing revel in such tactics to increase sales and profitability. The Bible is as fine an example of this as any document I know of.
Telling people what to think.
I have written much about that subject on this blog over the past decade. What they appear to be doing is knowingly, if not intentionally, enabling and profiteering from these behaviours across their services because a lot of people are vulnerable to manipulation, and there is a dysfuctional vulnerablity dollar out there, for marketers to exploit.
My apologies to Carol Cadwalladr for misunderstanding her perspective. Her work and that of other journalists and, importantly, the whistle blowers like Mr. Wylie and Ms. Kaiser is really critically important work.
-----.What follows is the original piece.
It was not about a hack at all.
Hacking is gaining unauthorised access to a prohibited computer system and injecting novel code into it to play with it, extract information, undermine it etc...
Cambridge Analytica is not a hacking operation.
Though it has been associated with hacking in the Nigerian Elections in 2015, with Cambridge analytica staff organising the hacking the emails of the Nigerian President to bring him down during an election Not that that was mentioned in this 'documentary'.
Not enough time, really. There is a lot in this documentary.
The narrative presented in 'The Great Hack' was carefully designed to avoid the simple truth that all mainstream news that carries advertising, are also being utilised as political grooming devices and that many are actively aware of that and unwilling to do anything reasonable about it.
The Sun, Telegraph and the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror, they all carry propaganda posing as news.
The narrative in The Hack was also to seek to blame Facebook, and the Tech companies, rather than talk about political grooming, seriously.
In essence a deflection
Another way to say it this : no
one talked intelligently about political grooming.
As a cultural and politically
institutionalised dynamic of abuse carried out in the public domain, a form of bullying, that is the mainstay of advertising,
marketing, religious indoctrination and propaganda.
Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-semite, racist, terrorist supporting politician; he is exactly the opposite.
The press bullying of him, and his strength of character, are an object lesson in how to deal with public bullies.
Here's my take on the 'documentary'... Ms. Kaiser is no ordinary whistle blower... Ms Kaiser worked for the Obama Election campaign, a proven grooming operation - I said so at the time, even without understanding the way online micro targeting was being weaponised by groups such as Cambridge Analytica, because I was paying attention to the funding drives on facebook, and to the mainstream print and broadcast campaigns. And because it's been the basic dynamic of neoliberal 'democracy' for a long time and I understood that no rational citizen would ever vote for policies that cause harm to his or her own community, voters are not that irrational.
Ms. Kaiser was involved in the 2015 Nigerian Election campaign, where she introduced a team of Israeli specialists to the Cambridge Analytica team, who had hacked the incumbent Nigerian President's emails...
Cambridge Analytica ran campaigns for right wing candidates in a number of third world countries, to earn a few bob and to prove the efficacy of the model, before going on to the really big bucks. 68 countiries, and probably more. Hundreds of elections.
Trumps Election 2016 campaign spent just under one hundred million US dollars on their facebook messaging.
Ms. Kaiser worked on Trump's campaign at the very core of it's Facebook operations, fully aware of what she was doing. She was at the very center of this. She knew they were targeting peoples biases, fears, insecurities and prejudice in order to exploit those for political gain.
The term for this activity is grooming.
It is taboo to say this out loud. "shhhhhhhshshs!"
Ms. Kaiser mentioned the use of weaponised communications tactics, which are apparently 'restricted' by the Department of Defence. I would say that every Instiotutional Religion deploys the exact same behaviour. Indoctrination of the faithful. Such practice is normative in violent hierarchies. Spreading stories, maintaining a narrative, optics, favours and punishment. I would take issue with Carole Cadwalladr's effort to load all the blame to Facebook and the Tech companies. They are liable and culpable, I agree, yet not singularly so. That has to be called out - the general practice of targeting known cognitive biases (vulnerability) ought itself be declared a criminal offence, as it is an abusive thing to do to another person.
Alexander Nix
Included in the 'documentary' was two brief sections covering Alexander Nix, the CEO of CA.
His boasting at a dinner meeting about CA's abilities, and his recalcitrant appearance before the House of Commons Committee Hearings on Fake News, where he got off very lightly.
Cambridge Analytica was shut down due to bankruptcy, - such a difficult decision to make (not), and so much money already banked, lives ruined and it is likely that the bulk of their files are now missing, destroyed or lost, etc - there's a hole in the evidence set.
Well, well, well.
If you wish to check the nature of the Observer and The Guardian take a peek at Medialens a UK based news media analysis website which has, since 2001, confronted the propaganda that gets passed off as 'news reporting' - in effect misleading readerships in line with existing established political hegemony via the readerships triggering their cognitive biases, or as I would call it, the grooming of ordinary folk via opinion posing as evidence (WMD) in the UK media.
Chomksy called that process of propaganda the manufacturing of consent.
I found The Great Hack riveting - and yet I felt it was somehow dishonest. That said, everyone might want to to watch it, and note how we, in our own unique case, are being mislead - turn the exercise into a learning by experience.
It also tried to pass off Russian influence on UK voting as a major influential factor, which is inaccurate - all competing powers brief against their perceived opponents, through various media outlets. That is standard practice, and no great secret or conspiracy. It rarely has any meaningful effect upon the target populations elections.
The major effective malign influences are always homegrown. The home government has more to fear from a people who realise they are being bullied than any other external state or agency.
In this previous posting, I outlined in the most precise and concise terms, the true nature of political grooming gangs.
Boris Johnson's £10 million grooming operation will go nowhere near his hair or his crumpled suits...
and "You've been Groomed!"
New Reality Show Pitch.
'Enjoy the
thrills and spills of indoctrinators, indoctrination and the
indoctrinated as our intrepid reporter takes you on a journey of
discovery, breakdown and release."
pitched to ITV, BBC, CNN etc...
all rejected it as 'improbable'.
subtext - are you trying to kill us off.
( yes, of course, you are grooming gangsters!)
No, i did not pitch this, this is all make believe fake news...
--Here's a track I created to articulate the realities of political and ideological grooming.
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