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.
I propose a discussion about establishing a legal definition of a behaviour that we are all too familiar with.
“Organised operations that target 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 as cottage industries or at an industrial scale, intentionally targeting and manipulating vulnerable people for ideological, religious, political or economic advantage.”
This behaviour is grooming.
If we had legislation defining this, and then criminalising it because it is intentional exploitation of human vulnerability and thus it is a profound abuse, then media platforms would be unable to permit any publishing of such content on their platforms, and it would be impossible then to exploit as a revenue stream.”
I have been watching the Dominic Cummings Road Show, and I have been wondering: why now, what is he trying to do, why is he so deliberately making himself a story in the public eye?
While we were overloaded with Cummings, this happened on Friday.
"People with cancer, liver disease or severe asthma have been dropped from the government’s coronavirus shielding list by text message before their doctors have been able to speak to them.
The decision to remove people with various health conditions from the shielding programme in England has caused upset. The text also informed people they would no longer qualify forgovernment food parcels.
Many who received the messages last Friday believed they were fake. But the government has since confirmed the texts are correct and are official government communications".
Cummings is, by his own admission, a media strategist, among other things, and he is a master baiter. He studies the fish, works out their vulnerabilities, then he baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he watches them bite and then he pulls them in. Brexit was a grooming operation since the day Johnson started lobbing rocks over the wall at the Tory Party's glass house, taking delight in the power he felt as those rocks (lies in print) started arguments he could safely observe from afar. Both of these men are people who revel in distal disturbance, men who enjoy the feeling of power they gain as they observe the chaos they cause, from a safe, well paid, distance.
Cummings grin, caught on camera, as he had that last drink of water, and walked away from the Downing Street Rose Garden Table spoke to me, and others, as 'Job done!'
Here, then is my review of some key aspects of the Corona Virus story that tries to join the dots, to see what Cummings intent really is. There are other aspects, to do with re-rigging economies and political power systems, opportunism and so forth that I will leave out of this analysis because that thread is not a public health thread, and it is the health of the people that I am most concerned with here.
I hope, sincerely, that I am wrong. I would - seriously - be delighted to be held in ridicule, to see the virus is eliminated from the UK population, by this Government, and to have my worries proven to be febrile fantasies of a feeble fool. I do have my doubts about these perceptions, about everything I write. That is why I question myself, and re-examine in the light of what evidence emerges. Opinion and belief is never enough, never adequate for dealing with matters of the shared commons. That demands evidence based policy at every level.
I shall start at the beginning, with Johnson's UK Policy as he outlines it.
3rd February - UK Corona Virus Policy Declared in Public
"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other. And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role. We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century."
Johnson lays out the policy - "Protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin!"
Chess, political gaming. By January 31 the UK Government knew the virus and disease was in country.
Throughout February, as the global situation worsened, the UK Government chose not to chase every case of known infection down. They chose not to pursue detailed contact trace, quarantine and provide treatment in isolation, of every case, in order to suppress the transmission of the virus. They asked people to self-isolate at home, rather than provide isolation treatment facilities, which they knew were a critical part of the Chinese and Vietnamese responses. They chose not to test or quarantine incoming travellers. They chose not to alert the population, even as they were being alerted by epidemiologists nationally and internationally. All of these together would have been necessary in order to activate the non-shut down Korean style suppression of transmission, eradication of virus within the population - they chose a policy that was not medically rational; it was, as it turns out, medically irrational.
They chose this policy on a daily basis throughout February. Even as epidemics were developing at pace in Italy and Spain and elsewhere.
5th March
Boris Johnson mentions herd immunity and dismisses the idea, or does he?
I suspect he was floating the idea, rather than dismissing it. A hint. Allowing room to manoeuvre in the future. To be able to draw back from such an idea, and present something that appears to address the situation, yet allows slow spread to continue.
13th March
Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Valance touts Herd Immunity. It's still on the books.
14th March
Professor john Edmund's, SAGE member : "Indeed, achieving Herd Immunity is the only way to stop this epidemic!"
14th March
UK Government suggests isolating elders in care homes, and shielding in place for people with chronic disease, everyone else carries on. Community transmission is in full flow, uncontrolled.
23rd March
UK Government orders shut down. Does nothing to implement suppression of transmission beyond stay at home, work from home. No policy to stop the spread. Protect the NHS results in many elective hospital work cancelled. Instead of Fever Hospitals, they build intubation hospitals. The spread of the infection continues. Hospitals start to face surges, deaths start to rise rapidly.
We know what happened after that. It gets worse, and worse. The only action that is slowing the community transmission is the fact that the bulk of the British citizenry stay home, and they take the various pressures that staying at home has created, on their shoulders. They show considerable solidarity, compassion and kindness. Mutual aid groups spring up everywhere. They watch in horror and disbelief as the shortages of PPE become a defining narrative. They watch as the death toll mounts. They watch as the UK Government does nothing to stop the spread of infection and does everything to allow a slow spread, through bad policy, inadequate provision. They watch as Government ministers lie about the situation. They stay home. They are not fearful, they are concerned. Concerned citizens doing their bit, watch a their Government fail to do it's bit, recounted by a media that is inadequate to the task of holding Government to account.
The people are so much kinder, so much warmer, so much more concerned about each others welfare than the Government is about theirs.
The citizens hold the line. The are the ones who do most to slow the transmission. But they cannot do this on their own, indefinitely.
10th May
Johnson makes a televised speech to the nation, and issues vague instructions to ease the lock down, to 'restart the economy'. The Economy has not stopped, the stock exchange is still trading, furlough is providing income for 6 million workers to stay at home, and they are all buying food and other goods, on-line and in weekly shops. That money is going back into the economy, rents are being paid, bills are being paid. The transmission appears to be slowing down, but it is nowhere near suppressed. Hospitalisations continue, deaths continue. The transmission is nowhere near being under control. British citizens, in poll after poll, say 60% want to continue to stay at home until it is genuinely safe. The Government wants them to go to work. A power struggle ensues. 13th May
The government lifts the restriction on how far people can drive to reach the countryside and take exercise, but visits and overnight stays to second homes remain prohibited. This encourages reckless behaviour. That is the intent. A war of attrition against the 60%.
16th May
"Back to school! Protect the vulnerable children!"
I have written about Gavin Williamson's odious Education Briefing from 10 Downing Street, the day before Gove appears on Marr. Williamson uses deliberate tactics - conflating issues, emotional blackmailing and gaslighting to deliver a bullying speech, aimed at putting pressure on teachers, manipulating parents and workers, sotto voce. The pattern is clear, the intent is obvious. They are going to use every manipulative tactic they can to push the workers back to work.
17th May
Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, Gove said: "The only way ever to ensure that you never catch coronavirus is to stay at home completely. There's always, always, always in any loosening of these restrictions a risk of people catching the coronavirus"
Here Gove is basically taking the piss, gas-lighting the genuine concerns of teachers, parents and children. He is bullying, brushing aside the risk, rather than governing in people's best interests.
May 26th
Democracy Now report on New Zealand explores what they did, and why they did what they did, and why it succeeded.
"New Zealand implemented one of the earliest lockdowns and has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Some of the country’s success has been attributed to her leadership, trust in science, and clear communication during the crisis. We get an update from Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand. He is an epidemiologist and a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Technical Advisory Group. Baker has been advising the government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.2 Their slogan is “Stay home, stay safe, and be kind.”
26th May
New Zealand's leading epidemiology advisor to the New Zealand Government speaks on Democracy Now. "And I think across the Western world, there was this strange idea of complacent exceptionalism, that somehow the virus might behave differently when it hit the Western world compared with how it was in Asia. But, in fact, we looked to Asia for examples of a good approach, and — for example, the way China contained the virus, and other Asian countries were managing it — we realized that elimination was possible, so we changed direction very quickly."
As I have written elsewhere, those countries that were willing to learn from China, Korea, Taiwan and other East Asian countries and apply the protocols for suppression of community transmission to stop the spread (rather than merely to slow it) with a view to eliminating the virus from within their population have done and are doing a very good job indeed, and those who chose not to learn from others experience have stumbled and lurched; making matters worse they have lied, manipulated data and evidence and gaslighted their populations and there are dead bodies all over the place.
Funerals and cremations with no-one present to mourn them. A terrible price has and is being paid by the people.
Peaks and Waves. Furthermore, these states are facing multiple peaks within this first wave - only because they refuse to learn from the East Asian experience. Why would they be so foolish?
They refuse to draw from the experience of New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Vietnam and others who have managed to suppress community transmission, and practically eliminate the virus from within their populations - their refusal to apply those lessons learned elsewhere is a deliberate choice, a political choice and an economic choice, not a public health choice.
It is important to understand that to prevent a second wave in the latter months of 2020 demands that the virus is eliminated from the local population in the first wave, retaining an active and agile contact trace, quarantine and isolation treatment facility ready for new outbreaks within each jurisdiction. This is entirely reasonable since populations are organised across the Earth within defined jurisdictions, with structured borders that can be policed. That means that borders must become quarantined borders. This means that the security of all is the security of the most vulnerable.
And the choice being made, as outlined in Johnson's February 3rd speech is to choose allow movement through those borders, to prevent the closure of the borders by allowing herd immunity to achieve a kind of parity, the parity that a vaccine would create except for the fact that no such vaccine is available, and no such vaccine is on the horizon within meaningful time limit.
Herd immunity is this manner entails a soft form of mass murder - avoidable deaths are not avoided, they are simply slowed down, and that is a deliberate action, intentional.
Those involved must be held to account, and we must understand that the lies and misleading narratives they used to protect themselves and their policy are damning evidence of intent.
The citizens of each of those countries have a stark choice in front of them.
We, the citizens of the UK, have a stark choice in front on us. May 22nd - the Dominic Cummings Road Show is launched.
The Dominic Cummings road show was designed to break the 'stay at home to protect the vulnerable' dynamic of concerned citizens across the UK. It forms part of a general thrust since Boris Johnson's 10th May passive aggressive management instructions to the nation. That is the outcome of the road show. Behaviour, actions, outcomes, patterns speak the truth of history.
There has been a serious, concerted on-line campaign portraying the genuine concern of UK citizens who choose stay home stop the spread as an irrational fear, with the gas-lighting suggestion that this irrational fear is itself causing the damage to the economy. Their fear is the culprit.
If nurses are 'Heroes' walking to the 'front-line', what are those who dare not step out of their homes? If Doctors and Shop Assistants are 'Heroes' what are workers, furloughed in comfort, receiving tax payers money for doing nothing, who refuse to get out and get the economy up and running again. because they are frightened? That was a subtext that was allowed far too much space, that went unchallenged for far too long. Freedom of speech, and the right to hold an opinion trumping the evidence.
Whereas it was, and it remains Government policy on SARSVOC2 and COVID19 that is causing the most damage to the UK Economy.
Had they chosen the path New Zealand took, the economy would be looking so much better right now.
The patchy nature of furlough as it was rolled out, the inadequacy of self employment support, the inadequacy of rural and farming support, the blatant bail outs to corporations by comparison, and the inadequacy of PPE support across all care systems have caused immense difficulties, difficulties that could have been avoided with better thought out policies. There are other groups who are vulnerable such as hospitality staff, entertainment artists, technicians and workers, tourism operators and independent retail staff and others who are not afforded decent furlough, and this all adds to the pressure to get out there and be working - whereas if the Government funded them to stay home, and stop the spread, that pressure would be greatly reduced.
There are recent media campaigns to exploit domestic abuse, child abuse and other long standing social care issues as leverage points to get the economy going. The implication is that shut down has made all there problems exponentially worse - and there is some truth in this, yet the solution is to provide more support rather than get everyone back to work. Where were these concerns in the start of the lock down, where were they in April? They were not headlines. But as soon as get the economy going emerges, they become headline stories. This is not accident, this is no co-incidence.
What if everyone gets back to work and there is no extra support for all these issues - support that is already lacking, even before the epidemic? What then? More spread. More pain, More abandonment.
The tune that has been playing in the background to the Cummings Road Show - "Get The Economy Moving, Get Back to Work!"
Cui Bono?
The Cummings Road Show in the media has created a groundswell of people who will not follow guidelines, as those were clearly abandoned by a senior Government figure, and "if it's one rule for them, and another for us, well stuff that!" which is both irrational and irresponsible. It amounts to "if they can be shits, I have the right to be a shit too!"
And what we hear and see is people in media nodding their heads, and going "Well, yes, totally get where you are coming from." Encouragement, rather than critique.
This all adds to the pressure to push teachers and others back to work, and it will intensify.
Gove maintains it is safe to return more children to school, the BMA and Teachers Unions point out that the evidence suggests quite clearly is that it is not.
This is insanity...
The transmission of the virus is not under any control within the UK. It is still largely invisible. We are still with more cases, and more hospitalisations and more deaths than when the lock down was called on 23rd of March.
The new NHS contact tracing program was launched 5 days earlier than planned, and after one day it is already falling apart. The program is headed up by a Tory peer, Dido Harding, who was CEO of Talk Talk during a serious data hack, and who managed that situation quite dreadfully. She has no public health qualification or skills. They readily admit that it will not be properly functional until end of June. A month of enabling more community transmission without the resources to quell outbreaks, to quarantine contacts, to treat the symptomatic away from the community.
It will take three weeks to five to return to another climb towards a new peak; there is no policy to stop the spread, eliminate the virus from the the population.
A new surge is all but inevitable.
They have engineered a point of no return. Herd immunity remains on the cards. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate "But today comes another challenge. A team led by Gabriela Gomes of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine argues that it is wrong to assume that herd immunity will only be achieved when 60 per cent of people have been infected. It is more likely, they argue, that the true figure lies between 10 and 20 per cent. The 60 per cent figure, they say, is based on the idea that we are all equally likely to contract the virus" This article was 4th of May. It has not been debunked yet, it has not been dismissed. Everything that has happened since 10th of may suggests it is feeding into the decision making at 10 Downing Street. https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/
"Incorporating, in a reasonable manner, inhomogeneity in susceptibility and infectivity in a standard SEIR epidemiological model, rather than assuming a homogeneous population, causes a very major reduction in the herd immunity threshold, and also in the ultimate infection level if the epidemic thereafter follows an unconstrained path. Therefore, the number of fatalities involved in achieving herd immunity is much lower than it would otherwise be.
In my view, the true herd immunity threshold probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24% implied by the cases illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. If it were around 17%, which evidence from Stockholm County suggests the resulting fatalities from infections prior to the HIT being reached should be a very low proportion of the population."
This article was published May 10th. - Same day as Johnson's speech. Sweden's situation is not as positive as many have been asserting.
Both of these are modelling exercises, removed from the social material realities.
Everything the Government is doing is going to guarantee the spread of the infection, coupled with inadequate provision for contact tracing, quarantine and importantly no provision at all for isolation treatment of symptomatic cases at the earliest possible moment, away from the community - that is to say nothing approaching the utility of Fever Hospitals. The evidence is that Government rejected the idea of Fever Hospitals when it was mooted as a way to stop the spread within care homes.
I have addressed the efficacy of fever hospitals in a previous blog piece. The logic is very clear and simple: it makes sense to send people who are symptomatic at the earliest possible moment away from main hospitals, away from care settings, away from peoples homes and shared apartment complexes where if symptomatic people remain to self treat they will absolutely guarantee more spread of infection with a higher viral load within the community! That is best avoided. But no, Government policy is to enable that spread with a higher viral load within the community.
This is insanity.
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson, The Cabinet, The Behavioural Insights Team are behaving appallingly. Remember that Government text message sent out to vulnerable people, without reference to their doctors?
"No more support, not for you."
Go forth and multiply (the virus).
I say, again, that they need to be removed from office, indicted for misconduct and misfeasance, and that we the citizens of the United Kingdom, in all four Nations, and indeed in the Republic of Ireland with whom we share a border, need a new UK government, a unity government, where the Majority Party works with all other parties, guided by epidemiology and the experience of New Zealand, Vietnam, China and others who have suppressed the transmission of the virus within their populations to do the same - to stop the spread of the virus, and eradicate it from the population.
As I like to put it, Stop the Spread, Spread the Love!
Both the people and the economy will benefit in equal measure.
Herd immunity is neither practical nor safe.
It is not economically sound either.
It is murder.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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"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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Theresa May responding to Jeremy Corbyn, in Parliament, on our taxes...
She rejects his point, she lies about the situation, then she gaslights Corbyn (and the opposition, and indeed the entire country) which is to say she switches from the direct question, disguises it with lies, and then blames the other for the problem...
And nobody comments, nobody stops her, nobody points out the lies,no says you are avoiding the question, no one points out the gas-lighting, the tactic of not only not answering the question directly, but of also implying the questioner is in the wrong!
This tactic is anti-democratic because it is abusive in intent. It is bullying, no less.
It is disruptive to good governance.
Parliament and the media alike must be challenged about these tactics...
We need to talk more about this kind of dynamic in public affairs....
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.
I wrote this for a friend, who was articulating her sadness, her 'sombre mood' and I realise I wrote it for me, and for you too. "Your feeling this way is part of your for humanity, and your feeling is healthy......
Stand as that health where ever you are.
Vulnerability is part of who we are at our very best, sensitive, aware. honest.... from these all kindnesses come. And when these human qualities are trampled by insensitive government, by media and by any others dedicated to diminishing awareness and veiling blatant corruption, it is such a bigness of it that we can feel a little lost. However, that comparison, for me at least, is inaccurate, because I know we are all backed up by biology, the logic of life, the bio-logic.
Life stands with us, as we stand with Life. The system is tiny by comparison,and we are even tinier that the system. The system is a disease state that has become institutionalised, and this is a healing planet.
The biological mandate for healthy human beings does not include making war, bullying, domination..... these are all disease states emerging from hierarchical institutional violence. On a healing planet.
You are healthy.
We are healers.
That's another reason to write and speak and sing into the world we share.".
That said, I'd like to share some thoughts arising from the media led 'debate' about whether or not the van attack at the Finsbury Mosque was terrorism, and what place, ranking has White Nationalist Islamophobic Terrorism has, and so on... roll on the 24/7 word fest, a pompous parade of people who they believe they are thinking, but are not.
Here's my thinking, laid out.
Violence Labelling.
Islamic Terrorism.
Islamophobia.
British Nationalist Terrorism (IDA, UVF etc..)
Counter-Insurgency.
Domestic Abuse.
Pedophilia.
Kings.
God.
War.
Remove the adjectives.
Take away the labels.
What is in the can?
Violence.
War is violence.
Terrorism is violence.
Armed Rebellion is violence.
Insurgency is violence.
Counter-Insurgency is violence.
Rape is violence.
Bullying is violence.
Indoctrination is violence.
Usury is violence.
Debt is violence.
Psychological manipulation is violence.
Withholding shared resources is violence.
Hoarding wealth is violence.
Telling children WHAT to think, using a reward punishment
dynamic is violence.
Cladding a high rise social housing building in flammable
material for the aesthetic of the rich is violence.
The issue is violence.
Not merely whose violence.
“Our wars are good wars, their war is terrorism, and therefore it is bad.”
No. Not having that.
All violence.
Violence. Power. Bullying. Manipulation.
All that violence that is fully staffed, professionalised and industrialised.
One cannot talk sensibly about terrorism
without examining all the evidence in detail.
Looking at all the evidence, we can say that making policy based on opinions in
this area is either intentional or unintentional and therefore nastily
dangerous or psychologically unstable, or both.
When States commit to war – the intent is real, emerges from a source and
has a plan and it’s run by people whose
unconscious motivations are driven by disease, rather than a healthy
intelligence.
To maintain the delusion of ‘Freedom and Democracy’ they avoid aspects of the
available evidence, most of which exists in the lived domain of ordinary
people’s lives at the bottom of the heap and talk about abstracts such as
‘Freedom and Democracy’.
It’s all drivel.
So how to tackle it?
Refuse to participate.
Look at the problem, dig into the detail.
Learn from ones own experience as part of that examination.
Were you ever bullied? What was that? What were the outcomes?
On a scientific, evidential basis we can look at what generates and maintains the
cycles of violence at each level: for example (any substantial or diagnostic list
or network charting of actors and influences
would be much more detailed than the outlines I give here).
- Individual : Damage in Utero, disrupted development, stress
induced by not being understood,
adult controlling reactions to that stress
- Family : Addiction, bullying, child abuse, domestic abuse,
Hierarchy of Power
-Community
: Fear of the other, maintenance of a hierarchy, disruption by conquest,
-
-Language
group : Fear of the other, disruption by conquest
-
-Religion
: Fear of the other, fear of self, shame, guilt, sin.
-
-Historical
Trauma : Patterns of wounded behaviour become normalised
-
-Criminals
: Can only operate within a property owning culture. For example, by
decriminalising weed, and granting folk the right to grow their own, and to
consume it, but not to sell it removes the criminal income stream. Why would a
Government not do that?
-
-Institutions
: Holding power, they defend themselves, even as they are hurting innocents.
-
-States
: War Capability, Corrupted Justice and Police Systems, Wealth control
-Environment
: Lack of a healthy environment, chronic stress, unresolved trauma, street
violence, neglect, divide between rich and poor,
-
-Genetics
: no evidence that violence is a genetic predisposition
-
-Biology
: no evidence that we, as a species, are naturally violent,
-
-Internalisation
: all evidence points towards internalisation of external values and beliefs,
via indoctrination, manipulation and spin, has a huge association with the
permission for violence.
… and we can try to see how they interact, what the dynamic
flows are, how do these levels of action and interaction synergise and
materialise.
Of course, this is just a short list, and the web is far more complex – yet the
basic core is simple, and when it is disrupted, violence emerges.
What are the common
themes?
Every outcome related to an event has meaning, is evidence.
All hidden outcomes are part of the product, from sourcing material to final
product, use and it’s discarding.
Opinion might be a useful guide, at times, as to what might need some
examination; the opinion itself, it is not evidence, and cannot take the place
of evidence.
As the British public are slowly discovering with regards to Brexit, and Fire
Safety for Social Housing.
Violence is the issue.
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.
We can argue about opinions. We can disagree, and argue for our opinions from different perspectives.
That is the mainstream media game, where
opinions are so often touted as facts or 'alternative facts', where the deliberate omission of
key evidence is a central ploy in their narratives and manipulations. One cannot gain a accurate picture of something if much of the detail is deliberately omitted.
We cannot argue about evidence that exists, that is well documented, that is reliable. It is there.
Which is why the Main Stream Media, and the other sources of propaganda and false/fake news avoids this.
The Invasion of Iraq was and remains a War Crime. Fact.
No mainstream media has reported this fact, alongside the various national and international statutes and ratified treaties that prohibit war and make the prosecution of any war of aggression a criminal offence.
The entire political structure of power depends on the electorate and intelligentsia arguing opinions.
Was Saddam a nasty dictator?
Yes, he was, albeit his system was much weakened by decades of sanctions. He was not a threat to any State in the West, or anywhere else for that matter, apart from Iraq itself, and then only in terms of being unable or unwilling to help the Iraqi civil Government deal with it's issues.
Was it morally right to remove him?
The only people who had a legal right, and the moral right to remove him were the Iraqi people. They were not afforded that option. Their rights in the matter did not matter to the international community.
Does Blair's opinion that he did the right thing at the time, bearing in mind all available evidence at the time, and the setting of post 9/11 stand as evidence?
Yes, evidence of either his duplicity or his insanity, or both. But it does not get him off the War Crimes charge.
Opinion being touted as evidence in the media, and in politics, as a tactical weapon used against entire populations, to distract, confuse, divide those populations.
"God told me to do it!" George Bush.
The reason why opinion is given such a status, is because most opinions, lacking the evidence, are reflections of personally held belief systems.
There is a lot of emotional attachment to those beliefs.
This means that when a personally held opinion is challenged, the person holding the opinion feels as if it is a personal attack, and the fight or flight sequence kicks in, and it all gets quite nasty very quickly.
So to rile folk, attack their personally held opinions or beliefs. And to get folk to fight each other, attack each sides opinions, using proxies within each community... to make it look like each community is attacking the other. Fake News.
If I want to 'save the world', or work for a healthier political set-up, then I must study grooming, and I must study my own
manipulative behaviours where they occur, and deal with them so that I never manipulate
and that will go some way to ensure that I am less likely to manipulated.
Nobody else can do that for me.
This is a task that requires ruthless self honesty and some practice.
A hard road, yet worthy of my best efforts.
It will go some way towards ensuring that trolls, bullies or seducers, liars, cheats, thieves and political demagogues have less purchase on my conscious and unconscious choices.
I do not watch tripe such as East Enders, Neighbours, X-Factor, Big Brother, The BBC News, etc as I find it deeply uncomfortable to watch dysfunctional behaviour normalised.
I am not 'moved' by puerile movies or triggered into unconscious reactive behaviours by tabloid headlines.
The hero kisses the girl in the midst of a battle.
American troops are scarred by their activities, whilst the deaths of the 'enemy' are relatively consequence free.
Spies are good. etc. it's all dodgy as...
The choice is mine, for I can alter my behaviour far easier than I can attempt to alter another's behaviour.
That is my primary sphere of influence.
Start here and work outwards.
In terms of professional manipulation of people through access to their often unconscious behaviours, I have written in previous blogs about the Behavioural Insights Team, originally attached to the British Government Cabinet, now a private enterprise drawing a steady earner from the public purse for advising Government on psychological tactics to 'nudge' folk into 'better behaviours'....
The assumption behind this 'nudge' is that some people are in a better position or are better 'qualified' to tell others what they should and should not be doing, but becausthose lessor able people are so 'resistant' then they need to be manipulated into behavioural changes. For their own good.
Another area of professional manipulation of electorates is big data, psychographics (psychometrics) and targeting known vulnerabilities to be triggered by 'messaging'.
Big data is a useful tool, and has many applications that will prove to be very valuable in terms of improving people's lives. But, like all tools, it can be used in benign or malign ways.
Brexit and the 2016 US election were new in that a highly sophisticated use of user data across a variety of platforms, apps, media, devices was used in real time to track and locate targets, and then that information about the target was used to designed specific 'messaging' to tap into their vulnerabilities, insecurities, prejudices.
This targeting was aimed at supporters, potential supporters and the other side.
It was coordinated in real time with media outlets and blogs etc with the intention of influencing the electorate, way, way, way beyond any potential that the Russians might have been able to affect. There is plenty of evidence of real time trolling by the media, of issuing reports designed to inflame anger and escalate hatred.
If anything the Russia influence was a distraction, a sleight of hand to hide the real hidden influence. It is basically an advanced high tech form of bullying. A beating that leaves no marks...
Russia aside, none of this would be possible if people in general were less susceptible to being manipulated, if critical thinking and evidence based policy making were core subjects of secondary schooling.
That is one of the key problems the world and all people's face as we slide into 2017.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe" *If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that.
You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not.
I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons.
Thank you for reading.
