The Great Hack - a review.

The Great Hack.

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.

www.medialens.org is well worth a look.

The Great Hack

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.

Let's have a laugh!

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.

https://soundcloud.com/coreluminous/we-know-how-to-groom-you



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.

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News Media, Our Billions, Their Billions, Blair indicted? who is in charge here?

This life is a jam, not a rehearsal.

We are sensitive, because that is how biology grows... through sensitivity.

Being bullied undermines sensitivity, always.

I understand that live in a Violent Hierarchy, where large powerful groups of people and institutions wage war, often through proxies, militarily, economically, culturally and ideologically seeking degrees of 'full spectrum dominance.'

That is not Healthy.

At all.

On any level.





It's bio-illogical.

Nature or Living systems are not competitive fora,  they are all fully fledged mutli layered co-operating diversities.

--


The historical situation of emerging from within oppression, to resist and recover full health.

That is 'where' we are.... the 'when' is always now.

So here's a behavioural over-view, a massive generalisation, yet I think one that is helpful as a focussing tool

It is understood, that in some cases, some traumatised or brutalised or neglected children or individuals can learn dysfunctional behaviours, thought sets; and in turn they craft controlling mechanisms to manage a chaotic life, which are internalised and later on expressed in the will to control others to meet perceived needs of the controlling, wounded party.

This will influence the children born to such a parent, so as to habituate the next generation to hierarchy, power, violence as normal...unconsciously... behaviourally.

So too with communities.   Suspend all judgement, just for the next few paragraphs amd walk with me a little, as I explain.l

What can happen to a family to turn it into a dysfunctional unsafe place is scaled up at the State level.. the same dynamics, different expressions due to size, complexity etc... both bad situations..

Europe is littered, as is every other continent, littered with traumatmised and marginalised communities, oppressed by more powerful communities..We call the States and 'demographics' - everything is expressed as socio-economic status...

The existing system is rooted in bullying, in hierarchies of power.

It has everywhere attack the egalitarian pre-conquest cultures. None have been spared. Contact with industrialised peoples leads to extinction...

It is to be expected that leaders and ruling groups within this Competing Powers set-up are violent operators.

Concentrated private Wealth has always been the primary political party, (we call them the Oligarchy) and it was they who first replaced the Kings, and it was they who opened and maintained Parliaments of Owners,  and who pursued general Education by the State, and the financing of wars via Taxation and borrowings, and later on, after WWI and II, they ceded limited powers to Democratic assemblies, begrudgingly..

Now, they - the owning class, the Oligarchy - are clawing back more of that power, and wealth which the believe is theirs by right, and by the might of their billions, and so it goes.

Until someone decides the break the cycle in his or her life...

Until many choose that, quietly, robustly and then choose solidarity...

The Billionaires have their billions - we tax payers have ours, and we need to not be fighting each other, divided to vote for which bully we choose to be ruled by.... really...

We need to be using our Billions to regulate the Oligarchy, because their businesses all operate within the commons, and must be forced to be honest, transparent and safe for the commons. It really is that simple.

That's how we can frame the next step in Democracy...

---
Some days I think that the news media's role is to deliver stress to our brains.

And distraction, entertainment, fine.

Honesty about power, the kind that makes a robust man laugh - not a chance!

Then I remember the Worshipful Company of Stationers (and Newspaper Makers), the Star Chamber and censorship of printed materials in 14th Century England.

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

--- War and News Makers...

Nuremberg.

the ultimate legal, criminal responsibilities lie with those who ordered the war.

Given that to marshall the logistics for war is a deliberate and complex operation, why did the citizens not act to prevent the politicians from committing War Crimes, at that stage?

The preparation of an illegal war is as much a war crime as the rest ....once combat commences, there is no way to undo...

it is not logic, nor is it advisable though it is common to undict a trooper and not have the troopers entire command chain in the dock with him.

If a War Crime occurred, then the FULL picture of command liability is essential in confronting what took place, and how...the context must be understood, not to mitigate, nor to deflect, but to focus liability where it is...

We NEED this information in the public domain, in order to be able to prevent it from happening

It has to be that future military commanders whould understand that any time a politician issues an illegal order, they have the duty reject the order, then to arrest that politician, and hand him or her to the custody of the Civil State.

It has to be that following illegal orders breaks the millitary code, and the order issuer can be arrested by the subordinate.

Illegal military orders ought be seen as treason against both the home people and the target peoples...

If we truly want peace, we must be robust about it.

Arrest Blair, Cameron, May - see who wants to go to war after that.





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.

Intergenerational Trauma, exported to Australia, expanded to cover entire land mass.

So there's the ecology of the human psyche, it's fragile, we are naturally sensitive.

 





The evironmentalism of living as the habitat, as part of ancient living patterns...

The ecology of diversity - 250 language groups, no warfare.

they had a justice system, like for like.. people get angry, make errors, do silly shit...they learn.

It was all about working together, different personalities and different skills developed meant the group as a whole was really fully well equipped.. all the time...

Then the Europeans arrived...

The Europeans were all traumatised from their culture of god given hiearchy of violence,  already some 1000 years old, and arrogant with it, and they brought the trauma cult to Australia...

eventually...this has to happen.

This is a superb, clear and grounded explanation of the basic thread of living with Intergenrational trauma patterns... a apologise, i have not been able to embedd the video, my link is not happy today...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqx8EYvRbQ - Intergenerational trauma, and recovery.

This animation was launched at The Healing Foundation's #OurFuture Youth Webinar on 24 July 18.

The animation has been created as a new education resource that explains where Intergenerational Trauma comes from and how it impacts young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
Please visit our website for more resources:  

http://healingfoundation.org.au/child... #OurFuture


there are those who bring nurture to the wounded,
those who confront the oppressors insecurity, and help resolve it...... if you let them, they will do so.


yes, here and there, now and then, are many people, many experiences, no two people entirely, or vaguely, the same; alike is something different, a shared space, a commons.

The average does not exist.

The averaging of humanity is a lie.

The healthy have a history, a dated chronology going back, 80,000 years and more.

Pay attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqx8EYvRbQ




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.

Is' Freedom' an illusion born of relative comfort within a violent hierarchical society.

There is no freedom within a Hierarchy of Violence and Power.

Trump is not free, nor are the Iranians.



The Palestinians are not free, and neither are the Israelis..

They may experience relative differences in how they feel they are and conflate those with freedom or a lack of it, yet none in those situations are free.

They are all trapped by the psychology of hierarchy and violent power relationships.

The USA, as self-assigned 'champions of freedom' is not free at all.

It is locked into a global pathology that it is enacting.

Where is your freedom to stop the US wars?

What freedom did the Iraqi or Libyan people have to say

"No! You cannot start wars on our land, our peoples!"

Who spoke for either at the time?

No one did.

Freedom is an illusion, a delusion conflated with relative comfort.

The entire psyche of competing industrialised militarised powers is a global psychopathy. and as long as it persists then freedom remains a delusion of the middle classes.

Egalitarian behaviour is our basic biological setting - co-operation is what biology is all about.

The Hierarchy system projects it's own psyche onto biology, calling it a struggle for survival.

Geuss what - Hierarchies of power are inherently unstable, and are constantly seeking to buttress their structures by competing violently... it's pathological behaviour... and because they are normalised to it then easily project it onto biology.

Patriarchy has nothing to do with being Male, it is to do with behaving as the Hierarch Cultural Archetype approved in such a system, for men.


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.

Battle of the Billions. Whose Billions Rules, whose Governs?

Billionaires, Wealth Funds, Tax Havened Wealth - people and organisations that have amassed vast fortunes, harvested from the general population, via the industrial consumer culture, which involves exploitation of any number of environmental and human vulnerabilities, through predatory economic systems owned by established Oligarchies...

Capitalist Billionaires use their Billions as political tools, to promote their continued status as economic and political hegemons, as rulers...

Churches do the same, of course... both Institutions collect funds from the 'faithful' which are used to enhance the status of the Institution. One pretends social service, the other spiritual service.

Their urge for vast wealth is not some personal flaw, it is not a banal greed for money itself, as much as it is the need for a very large fluid budget ie - the money, to feed and exercise the Power.

Capital is the unspoken Political Party, and we find it's comrades in every party, in every area of concern to Power.

Because some people conflate Capitalism with the Industrial Factory system, with trading, with the day to day business of working, buying and selling they can be frighted by calls to 'End Capitalism!' because it seems to them to mean end of all production, end of all luxuries and modern conveniences plus total social breakdown. It does not.

"End Capitalism!"

Ending Capitalism simply means confronting the Corporate Financial interference into civil and legislative matters of the commons, and it means confronting it in order to disable it, whilst taking up the shared tasks of healthy Governance.

Capitalism, and others, generally funds small actors in all sides of every mainstream discourse or problem and equally often they are silently supporting various extremes, on the sides of the angry, on the violent pushing and shoving of belief, faith and tradition, all  of it competing with evidence - it works,  it fosters division.

  As we see in competing identity politics - Brexit - distracting from the bullying which people who are 'different' are so often subjected to, often with mainstream media approval.

This in an age of better informed citizens where beleif, faith and tradition are exposed to the light of evidence, and are found wanting,.

Evidence matters,.

Power cannot be exercised unless one has an appropriate budget.

Power needs Wealth, Power needs aq constant supply of disposable, renwable income.

Capitalism is the political ideology of Wealth Rules All.

It is not factories and shops, even thouse do occur in Capitalist systems..

Capitalism is political rule by Oligarchs and their private wealth.

Ordinary folk cannot compete with such wealth.

I have £50 to my name...

And yet...

When we realise and understand that all taxation originates with and belongs to the ordinary citizen and is held in trust by Government, we can look again and perhaps see that we do have the economic and legislative tools with which we can regulate the Oligarchs.

All the wealth of Billionaires originated in our shopping, our working.. time to take a stand, a rational, evidence based stand.

Our Taxes, Our Billions, our Legislatures, our Judiciaries, us organised, our Political Power...

Regulate the Oligarchs, expose the press media to critical analysis, and confront liars... re-instate social care, environmental care and community as core operational practical values of Governance and the Civil Service.

We must take up the challenge, and occupy the legislatures, the judiciaries, the civil service, the other services, and do so democratically.

We must organise to fire the Corporate placemen and women.

Do business, we say the CEO, and stay away from Civil Governance.. 

#nowthatiswhaticalltakingbackcontrol

Every business profits from civil infrastructure, education, health systems, reseach so they ought to consider it a privilege to operate in the commons, rather an exploitable opportunity, a predators prey scape.

It's a privilege to be an operator in the commons. And there are responsibilities with that privilege. Do no harm, cause no toxic spill.........etc.,
An important step to confront the Billionaires is to assert control of our taxes as a collective, as 'our billions.'

And the only safe way to do that is to bring politics into the 21st Century of evidence, out of the dark ages of belief and opinion. Penalise lies in  public office severely.

The Commons demands those who avail of it cause no harm, to the commons or to any other. It demands that the use of the Commons is transparent.

As a citizen, I appeal to all other citizens, as a tax payer I call to all taxpayers, to see that the collected taxes are our billions, and we must deploy them well, to nurture society by nurturing all the people and the environment.

The profit of our endeavour is happy communities, of happy people, who are free of chronic stressors induced by politics or economics...


Kindest regards

It's not about what party will do what, it's about who will take up the task, on our call, during our watch, with our budget and our full support, to rebalance our social systems in favour of nurture.


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 easier as a consequence.