After last weekend’s revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Facebook data, and intervention in a number of elections around the world, the question is now being asked as to where this story goes next. Sure, there were interventions using all that harvested data on behalf of the Trump campaign in the USA, but why all the talk about the Brexit referendum? No-one had made the all-important connection.
Where were the interventions using that psy-ops-style targeting of voters? Where was the mass harvesting of voter data, and voters’ friends’ data, as happened in the USA? Where was the smoking gun that showed the Leave campaign behaving in an improper, and perhaps even unlawful, manner? Some of those questions are now being addressed - and, very soon, all of them will be answered. The first signs are already out there.
Just before the EU referendum, Vote Leave were already playing on voters’ fears by juxtaposing David Cameron talking positively about Turkey joining the EU (some time ago) with a brawl in that country’s Parliament. It wasn’t in the same league as the Nigerian intervention by Cambridge Analytica, which featured violence including bloody dismembering, but the message was clear: they’re violent and we’re letting them in.
Repeatedly, voters were told “Turkey: population 76 million is joining the EU [not true]. Our schools and hospitals already can’t cope!” The EU blamed for domestic problems, some invented (here in Crewe, no school has been oversubscribed, despite inward migration from Eastern Europe). The EU means violence. Fighting. We’re losing control.
Leafletting bundled Syria and Iraq in with Turkey. Foreigners. Brown people. Scary Muslims (tm). Violence. The EU is bringing them here. You know how to vote to stop this. And that was a mere taster for the next wave of voter manipulation revelations.
Yes, there is more to come. A lot more. MPs and MEPs are beginning to ask the questions, not merely for fun or to make mischief, but because they know some seriously improper behaviour has been taking place. Green MEP Molly Scott Cato has put it bluntly.
“The more we learn about the highly dubious and possibly downright illegal ways in which the Leave campaign manipulated voters, the less and less robust the result of the EU referendum appears. Unlike in the US, the investigations into electoral tampering in the UK are taking place behind closed doors so I am asking the Electoral Commission to tell us what they know. I am also questioning at what point interference in an election or referendum makes a result illegitimate”. And she is not alone.
One Tweeter observed “Labour’s Stephen Kinnock said that if Cambridge Analytica were proved to have been ‘in flagrant breach of our electoral rules, that would place a pretty huge question mark over the referendum result’”. Also, it’s not just about Leave EU, which boasted of using CA, then executed a reverse-turn and claimed they hadn’t.
As I suggested, this is also about Vote Leave, the official Leave campaign. It will also explain the shrill and persistent shouting down of dissent since the referendum, why we have been subjected to constant “You lost, get over it” taunts, why anyone wanting to debate the issue is abruptly told that the matter is closed. It isn’t. Stay tuned.
Never mind that, Tim.
ReplyDeleteWhat about CA links they claimed with the MOD, MI5, MI6, Ukraine and Israel? Funny how that's almost gone off the msm radar. Or maybe not.
Meanwhile......Stephen Kinnock?......Oh for fuck's sake - Windbag2?......Do me a favour......
Craig Murray is former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan. He posted this on his blog:
ReplyDeleteBoris Johnson A Categorical Liar.
22 Mar, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig.
Evidence submitted by the British government in court today proves, beyond any doubt, that Boris Johnson has been point blank lying about the degree of certainty Porton Down scientists have about the Skripals being poisoned with a Russian “novichok” agent.
Yesterday in an interview with Deutsche Welle Boris Johnson claimed directly Porton Down had told him they positively identified the nerve agent as Russian:
You argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly? Does Britain possess samples of it?
Let me be clear with you … When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory …
So they have the samples …
They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, “Are you sure?” And he said there’s no doubt.
I knew and had published from my own whistleblowers that this is a lie. Until now I could not prove it. But today I can absolutely prove it, due to the judgement at the High Court case which gave permission for new blood samples to be taken from the Skripals for use by the OPCW. Justice Williams included in his judgement a summary of the evidence which tells us, directly for the first time, what Porton Down have actually said:
The Evidence.
16. The evidence in support of the application is contained within the applications
themselves (in particular the Forms COP 3) and the witness statements.
17. I consider the following to be the relevant parts of the evidence. I shall identify the
witnesses only by their role and shall summarise the essential elements of their
evidence.
i) CC: Porton Down Chemical and Biological Analyst
Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the
findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples
tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent OR CLOSELY RELATED AGENT.
The emphasis is mine. This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a “Novichok”, as opposed to “a closely related agent”. Even if it were a “Novichok” that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a “closely related agent” could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.
This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying – to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people – about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack. It might well be an attack originating in Russia, but there are indeed other possibilities and investigation is needed. As the government has sought to whip up jingoistic hysteria in advance of forthcoming local elections, the scale of the lie has daily increased.
On a sombre note, I am very much afraid the High Court evidence seems to indicate there is very little chance the Skripals will ever recover; one of the reasons the judge gave for his decision is that samples taken now will be better for analysis than samples taken post mortem.
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This website remains under a massive DOS attack which has persisted for more than 24 hours now, but so far the defences are holding. Some strange form of “ghost banning” is also affecting both my twitter and Facebook feeds. So please
The state and corporate media now have evidence of the vast discrepancy between what May and Johnson are saying, and the truth about the Porton Down scientists’ position. I am afraid to say I expect this to make no difference whatsoever to the propaganda output of the BBC.
Anyone think Brit mainstream media will pick this up and run it as a major story?
No, me neither.
Therein lies the problem. Who is going to prove reliable witness? The Russians? Hardly. Anon has a problem with western governments and security services "hard evidence". Expert evidence is decried,as in Brexit, and lies and misinformation as distributed by most of our press and media, for their own various purposes, are king (or president!).
ReplyDeleteWhat's the answer when there are "trolls" ready to pounce on any opposing argument to provide their own version of newspeak to sway popular opinion? The UK press and media have done a complete disservice to the British public in setting their example of almost complete disregard for the truth so it is no surprise that there are those on social media who will use the same tactics.
Unfortunately those in/without power will always try to hold onto/gain it by any means, eg.DUP finance from wherever, so disinformation and lies will be part of lives forever. You just have to pick whichever side you disbelieve less.