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The Guardian has an interesting article describing how Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage used techniques developed within the military to influence Britain's vote to exit the EU. Although it appears that the companies involved (AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytics) are private companies, they have deep roots within the military.
The article describes Britain as a "managed democracy", with major decisions controlled by a US Billionaire.
[ n1: The article is an interesting read, including a reference to how in 2013, Google Founder Eric Schmidt's daughter Sophie suggested Cambridge Analytics get in touch with Palantir, Peter Thiel's data mining contractor for the GCHQ and many US military and intelligence agencies. Sophie currently works at Uber. According to a former employee, in 2013 Cambridge Analytics was just a "psychological warfare firm [...] before we became this dark, dystopian data company". ]
It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t.
[...] The Electoral Commission has written to AggregateIQ. A source close to the investigation said that AggregateIQ responded by saying it had signed a non-disclosure agreement. And since it was outside British jurisdiction, that was the end of it. Vote Leave refers to this as the Electoral Commission giving it “a clean bill of health”.
[...] I asked David Banks, Veterans for Britain’s head of communications, why they spent the money with AggregateIQ. “I didn’t find AggegrateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us. There’s no conspiracy here. [...] Their targeting was based on a set of technologies that hadn’t reached the UK yet. A lot of it was proprietary, they’d found a way of targeting people based on behavioural insights."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday May 15 2017, @01:00PM (4 children)
I've read this, I get the connections, I see the possible exploitation of grey areas in electoral funding rules, but what I don't see is the all important WHY. The article does not enlighten on this.
Shady secret billionaire business cabal influencing democracy? Got it. File alongside "illuminati" and "world government" until proven, but maybe something in it...
Same cabal backs Trump? Got it. Makes sense, a large part of the business world were pro-Trump, some sectors for obvious self-interest reasons. Possibly even a majority of them, and the markets like him so far, yep, could be.
Same cabal backs Brexit vote? Er. WTF? WHY? The vast vast majority of the business world were (allegedly) pro-remain, and practically all the "establishment", all the "experts", very few were pro-Brexit. Essentially the remain campaign's entire basis was "voting brexit will screw up the economy, break the city and be bad bad bad for big business". It was the foundation for project fear. It was probably the reason many of the poorer (or "less well educated" if you are neoliberal elite) parts of the UK voted out - screw big business (won't happen - the little guy will always get shafted either way, but whatever).
So either big business secretly influences a referendum to get a result that all the experts said would be really really bad for big business (again - wtf, why?), or the entire remain campaign was a con job and brexit will actually be good for big business - in which case remain damned well deserved to lose anyway.
The biggest thing that doesn't stack up, however, is the inherent assumption in the article that the leave campaign won it. They didn't, they had a poor campaign full of lies. The remain campaign lost it, threw it away, dumped a massive poll lead with the dumbest political campaign I have ever seen. Who influenced that, and why?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @01:57PM (2 children)
The Guardian is a joke, and the article is a shit-show. I love their info-graphic. I'm sure they have one, or several, discussing the Trump campaign ties to Russia as well.
What a joke that "news outlet" has become, if it ever had any serious journalistic integrity to begin with (I am not a Brit so I am not sure).
I am living in a glorious time, where conservatism and global-skepticism is the new cool. Keep crying lefties, your tears will cure even "climate change."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:52PM (1 child)
Yes it did, it was started as the Manchester Guardian shortly after The Peterloo Massacre. [wikipedia.org] In the late 20th Century it became known jokingly as the Grauniad, after cut-backs to copy editors let basic spelling mistakes appear in print. More recently; Well researched and well written pieces have given way to ill-informed, leftist opinion pieces and editorials. It became more or less unreadable about 5 years ago, coincidentally when anybody sane began abandoning 'the left' due to their embrace of social justice and fake victim culture.
The article that finally finished it for me was this one. [theguardian.com] Unrepentant, murderous psychopaths are the victims here? It is but one step from the Soviet policy of putting 'oppressed' criminals in charge of the gulags. Fuck that disgusting, loony publication!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @05:33PM
Yes, that article just points out how some people are either straight up "trolling" with their nonsense, or they genuinely cannot apply logic to normal concepts.
Shit like "Well that type of speech does hurt, it hurts feelings" where the hurt argument has to do with inciting violence... you know the real kind of hurt, not your feelz.
They put feelings on the same level, and dare I fear even on a higher level than actions. Which is total and utter nonsense. Then they use labels to discredit their opposition when their BS is throw back at them.
"Well he maybe murdered 5 White people, but he was oppressed his whole life and White people are racist so it's OK! Please feel pity for him, he may go to jail for life!"
Total absolute cancer. And I hope this cancer can be cured soon, even thou I would love to see all cancer cured, not just the ideological kind.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:07AM
The EU provides more protections for ordinary citizens than UK law will.