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Companies learning to flip elections perfected their tactics in smaller or emerging countries, such as Latvia, Trinidad, or Nigeria, before turning to markets involving elections in developed nations. Paul Mason suggests that while at the moment there is a lot of angst from people being reminded of how their harvested data is used, it is really the union of private espionage, cracking, and "black ops" capabilities that should be setting off alarms.
Disturbingly, both CA and SCL have high-level contracts with governments, giving them access to secret intelligence both in the US and the UK. SCL is on List X, which allows it to hold British secret intelligence at its facilities.
It now appears that techniques they used in Ukraine and Eastern Europe to counteract Russian influence, and against Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, were then used to influence elections in the heart of Western democracy itself.
Let's be clear about what we're facing. A mixture of free market dogmatism plus constraints imposed by the rule of law has led, over the past decades, to the creation of an alternative, private, secret state.
When it was only focused on the enemies and rivals of the West, or hapless politicians in the global south, nobody minded. Now it is being used as a weapon to tear apart democracy in Britain and the US we care — and rightly so.
From New Statesman: We need to destroy the election-rigging industry before it destroys us
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:52AM (5 children)
In American politics there are several factions fighting it out.
The koch/murdoch group. These have controlled the republicans narrative for about 20 years. They have their set of media outlets (such as fox)
The clinton/obmama/sorros group. These have controlled the democrat narrative for about 25. They have their set of media outlets (such as CNN)
There is a new set of players on the board.
The FANG group. They have aligned themselves with the traditional DNC group. They are their own media. They do not really need the 'old media'. They basically tripped over themselves to see how they could help the DNC.
Some of the ycombiner group. They have aligned themselves with a new player, the rest following FANG. The trump group. This group hijacked the 'new media' in many ways. Using their own methods and even at times their own server clusters against the FANG messaging.
The 'netizens'. We are among them. We randomly assign ourselves to one of the groups. Depending on what propaganda we have been exposed to.
The 'trump' group is not playing nice with the other 3. They want to 'tip over the apple cart' as it were. The other 3 were *very* comfortable with the status quo, and the string of armored cars with cash in them. The 'trump' one is slightly aligning itself with the RNC group to draw in votes.
The parties that have popped up out of this have 3 fairly distinct messages 2 of them overlap somewhat but not totally.
The RNC is "dont fuck with it and lets let the multinationals write our laws". Basically "the man". Money is their leaver of power.
The DNC is "say whatever and use our media to make you vote for us because we know best THEN let the multinationals write the laws". Basically the puritains recreated. Shame and emotion is their leaver of power.
The 'trump party'. This will be a short lived thing. It will fracture into the other 2 groups eventually. But for now it is "lets make jobs for everyone and throw out the freeloaders". This attacks the very base messages both the DNC and RNC have been carefully cultivating for years. The RNC with their cheap overseas labor (free trade). The DNC with their cheap imported labor (undocumented workers).
This is a 1984-level threat being leveled against us by the Big-G Government itself.
I would look more towards FANG to pull that off. They control the means to communication. That is how 'big brother' worked in 1984. Look to who they are aligning themselves with. https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ [wikileaks.org]
Everyone is acting like this is 'new'. Hardly. I first noticed it around 1999. I have watched in horror as it has got worse and worse. I researched it back to the 1930s and gave up on it because it became too depressing. The only new twist is the naked brazen hypocrisy the DNC has show with its media groups. They copied everything shitty about FoxNews and turned it up to 11. Trump has shown many in our gov are little more than paper tigers who hold a crazy amount of power and should not be allowed in charge of anything. Very few vote for their constituents and vote straight party line for years on end.
Here is food for thought (hehe) https://fanaticcook.com/2015/05/05/when-and-why-did-americans-start-eating-bacon-and-eggs-for-breakfast/ [fanaticcook.com]
Think about that. Before this dude got involved we did not eat bacon for breakfast. One of our key meals for the day is corner-stoned with an advertisement campaign. Anyone I mention it to fails to see why it is important. We are manipulated on a scale that is amazing and frightening and we do not see it at all. We are incapable of seeing it. Take for example the current DNC pet project. Revoking the 2nd amendment. The puritans have returned, with a new set of causes. With mass surveillance now in the open they are doubling down on it. With new laws to enact what they want and tame the internet. Watch for the sweeping seizing of power and using Trump hysteria (that they created) to do it with. These are open attacks on the bill of rights. They have already subverted the 4th and 5th. By using the idea of 'not the gov doing it'. Watch them use the same methods to attack the 1st and 2nd.
Scott Adams noticed in 2016 how shockingly bad the DNC was acting in 2016 compared to a fairly normal RNC. Their message was trite and poorly formed and one bound in arrogance. The Trump camp seized on it and made them eat it and live it by using their own platforms they designed for the RNC and DNC to push his message. They have corrected that mistake by 24/7 Russia/hookers take on Trump. A distraction from what is going on. There is a power struggle that we only see in glimpses going on.
I find it deeply troubling that right-wing voices here have already risen to the defense of these propaganda groups
You find it troubling because they are defending the 1st amendment? Interesting. Why is that? Is it because you have decided 'right-wing' are something to be hated? Stop and think WHY do you hate them? Is it because of what they do or because someone told you what they do. You are being manipulated. Specifically by use of innuendo and rumors. You may think you are immune to it. You are not. Con artists actually like smart people to con. They always think they are too smart to be taken.
When Trump said its all rigged, he meant it and was mocked for it. Yet here we are.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:01AM
You mention bacon and eggs. Did you miss the cereal campaign? Sweetened grains for breakfast? There was another advertising campaign devoted to popularizing breakfast cereals. We have the very same manipulation of the public that you mentioned. A lot of people have made greater and lesser fortunes on that manipulation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:22AM (2 children)
And they should. Let's look at the story in more detail:
In other words, a shitty breakfast.
Bacon and eggs can be cooked in a similar length of time as the grain porridge (Beech-Nut sliced [google.com] its bacon thin (ad is from 1905 no less and they're pushing thin, sliced bacon for breakfast then), making it a quick cooking food). And there's a synergy there. Cook the bacon first and then you can reuse the grease for cooking eggs (need some oil/fat to keep from sticking to the pan). Third, bacon and eggs just taste good for most people. And the aroma fills the house. It's definitely a better experience to wake up to.
Instead of a silly story about Beech-Nut getting propaganda cooties on our sacred bacon, perhaps we should consider what was actually going on. People from the late 19th Century through to the early 1920s were steadily becoming more affluent. And one of the many things affluent people do is eat better tasting and better cooked food. That means more meat, eggs, and milk products among other things. At that point, you run into the gritty realities of making breakfast. You want something that cooks and cleans fast. The wife isn't going to get up two hours early just to make breakfast. Any tricks like the above reuse of bacon fat for cooking eggs is a time-saving synergy that a busy wife would appreciate. So meats that are suitable for breakfast? Ground or thin sliced meat will cook faster. Poultry and fish don't have a good texture for that. You're stuck with stuff like pork, beef, or mutton. Bacon and eggs probably just survived this breakfast evolution process better and Beech-Nut was one of the lucky benefactors of that.
They, of course, advertised. And the dude who specialized in modern advertisement is, of course, going to claim that he was instrumental in selling said bacon and eggs even though Beech-Nut had been pushing bacon for at least two decades before. People weren't going to continue to eat the old crap.
Tl;DR. Cool story bro, but I notice nobody actually looked hard at how successful this advertising campaign was supposed to be.
Drama much? I'm sure there are interesting parallels to the Third French Republic which had a similar nasty struggle between groups with similar ideologies. But that's not particularly sexy since that particular problem shows up again and again over the centuries with no special merit to the 1930s instance.
So you are no doubt considering the Wiemar Republic. But that had the special flaw of being ignominiously imposed by the victors of a brutal war with numerous parties vying hard to be the engineer when the trail finally ran off the rail. This key factor isn't present in the US which has a government that was imposed voluntarily and has stuck around for a couple of centuries.
I doubt that fluff can convince anyone who wasn't already convinced. It's a colossal waste. A key thing to remember about these propaganda people is that the only person that they need to convince is the one writing their checks. Something like Cambridge Analytica seems more like a bunch of grifters shaking down sugar daddies than a credible propaganda threat.
I think of these propaganda games more as voluntary wealth redistribution than something dangerous that we need to ban.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:22PM (1 child)
I have been saying this shit since the election but the left is convinced that we were all brainwashed into voting for Trump because Facebook told us to.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:57PM
The belief is its own reward. (Or is that "The disease is the cure."?) I foresee a lot of such people dumping funds into social media and other money sinks because of their belief in its magic efficacy. That's one thing market economies do well, is transfer money away from clueless people efficiently.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:16PM
First, can you explain FANG? Do you mean Lee Fang [wikipedia.org]?
Second, to ratchet things down a little bit, I will point out that the American government was built to move slowly. There are checks and balances in place to make actual subversion of the Bill of Rights nearly impossible.
Granted, the Supreme Court seems intent on changing their scope dramatically to suit political opinions. But various decisions have both reduced and grown the scope of the Bill of Rights. The conflict between the 1st and 14th amendments in particular keeps swinging between one or the other being more powerful.
Third, I take strong issue with your assertion that the DNC is working to "revoke the 2nd amendment". That is and has always been blatant NRA propaganda. It's been a foregone conclusion for many years that the "right to bear arms" does not give people a right to possess military-style equipment of warfare. I personally disagree that banning nuke ownership is allowed under the 2nd amendment, but I am objectively safer as a result. I am also safer because of the Firearms Act of 1934, which effectively banned fully-automatic weapons and has been found to be consistent with the 2nd amendment.
Even if the leftist boogeyman the gun manufacturers running the NRA want you to be afraid of were successful in banning gun ownership entirely, the Supreme Court would find it just as unconstitutional as they find anti-abortion bills that stray too close to outright bans. And abortion isn't even a specifcally-outlined right of the people like guns are.
The question on guns is not whether the government can or should ban certain weapons. They already do. The question is: which ones? The Democrats, backed by increasingly massive public support, want to answer that question by saying: just the ones we already ban, but do it better. That's what comprehensive background checks and waiting periods are for. Only a minority of Democrats want to ban semi-automatic firearms, and the DNC sure as hell isn't getting back into that fight after how badly it wounded them in 1994 with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
Of course, if gun owners weren't being manipulated by fearmongers trying to sell them guns, Republicans could pass some gun control legislation that would actually fix some things without infringing on anybody's rights. You're right not to trust urban liberals to keep your guns safe. So write the bills yourself before you become irrelevant to the conversation.
Lastly, I do not hate the right wing; I hate corporate speech being treated as deserving of equal protection as individual speech. Your claim about me is exactly the partisanship I am talking about. Just because I think that right wing propaganda is bad, you assume I must think that left wing propaganda is just fine.
For the record, I cannot stand real liberal media (MSNBC and Bill Maher types) unless it's actually funny. Even then, I can't remember the last time I watched The Daily Show. Being pandered to just does not interest me. That's why I get my news here and wander into the political comment sections.
I also want to say that having been around a lot of liberals and progressives, I find the politics of the so-called mainstream media (NYTimes plus CNN and other TV news) unrecognizable. They feel Republican to me in the same way they must feel Democratic to you.
I think the truth is that the mainstream media are just corporatist. It's the part of the RNC I dislike and I think it's the part of the DNC you dislike. I am coming more and more to see them both as mainly corporatist, with their differences existing only to play the democracy game. Those of us who dislike corporatism have found ourselves in various groups depending on the rest of our politics - Occupy, Tea Party, DSA, alt right - but anti-corporatism still has not found its way into mainstream politics.
The anti-corporatists got a "win" by electing Trump. But the win only goes so far as coalescing the anti-corporatists towards a single candidate. He's still an urban billionaire that wants to redistribute the economy towards the wealthy, and by the way also wants to take your guns without due process. He promised to "drain the swamp" because he's a serial liar and his voters don't seem to care.
I did not vote for Trump because he's a liar and a racist. That's it. If there were another candidate making the same promises who wasn't a liar or a racist, I'd be out knocking doors for them. I'm the kind of leftist who wants to kill NAFTA etc., get us out of the world police business (especially in the middle east), make good union jobs be available again to anyone with a high school diploma or GED, and keep the government out of my morality thank you very much. This is more in line with what Trump promised than what Hillary promised, but again, did not vote for Trump because those promises were always lies and he was always the more likely candidate to do stuff like making the federal deficit worse to pay for tax cuts to the rich.
All of that said, I should not have to explain my politics to avoid being called a partisan. My OP was a direct response to what people wrote, not what they are. That you would begin to attack me based on the straw man identity you assume of me is literally the root of the problem I wrote about.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?