Thursday 2 March 2017

Squaring the Circle: #Intersectionalities #SERCO #Mercer #CambridgeAnalytica

or...; "There's always trouble at passes"..


Analytica
Quote; "“This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,” said professor Jonathan Albright."...
"a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas.

By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding factor in elections around the world.

Most recently, Analytica helped elect U.S. President Donald Trump, secured a win for the Brexit Leave campaign, and led Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign surge, shepherding him from the back of the GOP primary pack to the front.

The company is owned and controlled by conservative and alt-right interests that are also deeply entwined in the Trump administration. The Mercer family is both a major owner of Cambridge Analytica and one of Trump’s biggest donors. Steve Bannon, in addition to acting as Trump’s Chief Strategist and a member of the White House Security Council, is a Cambridge Analytica board member. Until recently, Analytica’s CTO was the acting CTO at the Republican National Convention*." Go to: https://scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine For full article.

*Italics mine.
 

 Deutsche Bank Suicides 

 
Quote; "Calogero Gambino, 41, was found hanging by the neck from a stairway banister, reports the Wall Street Journal.
He was found by his wife, and pronounced dead at the scene, New York City officials told the paper.
Gambino, an associate general counsel and managing director, had worked for Deutsche Bank for 11 years.
He had worked closely for the bank on legal issues relating to the Libor scandal, after regulators started investigating the company in 2012.
He was also an associate at a private law firm and a regulatory enforcement lawyer between 1997 and 1999, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing Gambino's LinkedIn profile and conference biographies.
"Charlie was a beloved and respected colleague who we will miss. Our thoughts and sympathy are with his friends and family," Deutsche Bank said in a statement.
The bank has been battling allegations that employees manipulated the Libor benchmark interest rate as well as currency markets."Go to: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/second-deutsche-bank-executive-found-dead-suspected-suicide-1471744 For full article.

"How Much does a Grecian Earn?"
Quote; "European Union officials are urging Greece and its creditors to strike a financial aid deal for the country quickly to safeguard economic recovery. However, Athens has refused a demand from its creditors for more austerity measures.
The Greek government said it would not ask for “a euro more” from its impoverished citizens.

Failure to agree on debt relief and economic reforms raises doubts over the future of the €86 billion Greek bailout program, with new aid withheld until the talks move from deadlock." Go to: https://www.rt.com/business/377686-greece-no-euro-more-austerity/ For full article.


The Old Divides?
Quote; "The imbalances in the economic strength of euro area countries make the continued function of the single currency area a primary concern, said former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in an interview with the World Gold Council.  He suggests the inequality is largely down to a north/south geographical divide which means the division between the northern and southern EU countries is too big. The bloc's more prosperous nations such as Germany consistently fund the deficits of those in the south, and that simply can't go on, said Greenspan.
"The European Central Bank (ECB) has greater problems than the Federal Reserve. The asset side of the ECB’s balance sheet is larger than ever before, having grown steadily since Mario Draghi said he would do whatever it took to preserve the euro,” he said.
“And I have grave concerns about the future of the euro itself… The eurozone is not working", added Greenspan." Go to: https://www.rt.com/business/377677-greenspan-eurozone-not-working/ For full article.

Arafel comment: North and South? You might just as well say, "beat the w*ps!" Surely returning the Grecians their marbles would be an anti-imperialist act (for it is the imperialists who have championed "The Greater Europe's" unconsidered eastern expansionism -is it any wonder that; "The centre cannot hold"?-)? Please see; "Sophie's Choice (again)", go to: https://gkhales.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/sophies-choice-again-brexit.html
and the archive on; "A Place to Talk" especially all titles concerning "The Omerta", go to: https://gkhales.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/a-place-to-talk.html

Intersections 
Quote; ""Minority Report"?
Posted by Gerard in reply to "Good point. I suppose you could say it's a marketing concept (which only makes it more perverse)?nm"

..the intersectionalities which truly exist are subverted by algorithmic profiling that by identifying (according to the "pursuit of happiness" individual profit motive), "new" groups or "segments" then attempts to create or "encourage" (depending on the degree of development of the perceived or potential grouping), both them and the artificial intersectionalities they themselves create. We might see these new segments and intersections as "counter-revolutionary" (in a literal way in that they interrupt the cyclical movements of true commerce -a form of sabotage-, for true commerce recognises that the efficiency of a thing is also in its lifespan and repair-ability -that is if the manufacture of the repair is itself efficient, "planned obsolescence" is antithetical to the pursuit of sustainability and the protection/encouragement of biodiversity-, the "pursuit of happiness" model of economic growth does not, instead it attempts to optimize short-term profit for the minimum number of individuals), or even "5th Column" for they are designed to eradicate or prevent the evolution of consciousness within pre-existing "classes" or "segments" (or potential what one might term, "natural" groupings), and replace that consciousness with another "ready-made" alternative, such consciousness is also vital to the recognition of "sameness" between the segments (the "intersectionalities"), and therefore this too is deliberately disrupted and manipulated (interesting that this should highlight how Marxist analysis of economically determined relationships should still have relevance once removed from the anachronistic context of the Industrial Revolution)."


Frequency..
Posted by Gerard in reply to "Mosaic"
The neo-con dream is the natural denouement of the "manifest destiny" of capitalism, agreed? Does not the articulation of the profit motive when untrammeled result in a shorter and shorter frequency between periods of crisis when resources must be somehow replenished? Do we observe a true schism between the law of supply and demand and the activities of monopolistic commerce?" Posts to The Lifeboat News Message Board, view thread: http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/thread/1484201635.html


More About Mercer
 
Quote: "The fuel behind Mercer's influence are the absurd sums of money he approves at the investment company he runs, Renaissance Technologies, based on Long Island. Its famed Medallion Fund is one of the most successful hedge funds in investing history. Averaging 72% returns before fees, over more than 20 years. A statistic that baffles analysts, and outranks the profitability of other competing funds, like the ones George Soros and Warren Buffet run. In 2015, Mercer had single-handedly catapulted Cruz to the front of the Republican field. Throwing more than $13 million into a super PAC he created for the now failed candidate. But with the Trump campaign faltering, and struggling for support, there's a second chance for the Mercers to make a big bet.
The Trump campaign is well aware of this, in fact, sources within Mercer's super PAC would later tell Bloomberg News that shortly after Cruz drops out of the race, Ivanka Trump and her wealthy developer husband Jared Kushner, approach the Mercers, asking if they'd be willing to shift their support behind Trump. The answer is an eventual, but resounding yes.
In the months leading up to Trump's presidential win, the Mercers would prove a formidable force. Beginning after the disastrous Republican Convention in July, they would furnish the Trump campaign with millions of dollars, and new leadership, but they would also furnish it with something more -- a vast network of non-profits, strategists, media companies, research institutions and super PACs that they themselves funded and largely controlled." Go to: http://therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/250-article-with-comment/3021-the-bizarre-far-right-billionaire-behind-bannon-and-trumps-presidency For full article.

Quote; "But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specialises in “election management strategies” and “messaging and information operations”, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)
 Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign and, so I’d read, the Leave campaign. When Mercer supported Cruz, Cambridge Analytica worked with Cruz. When Robert Mercer started supporting Trump, Cambridge Analytica came too. And where Mercer’s money is, Steve Bannon is usually close by: it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board.
Last December, I wrote about Cambridge Analytica in a piece about how Google’s search results on certain subjects were being dominated by rightwing and extremist sites. Jonathan Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, who had mapped the news ecosystem and found millions of links between rightwing sites “strangling” the mainstream media, told me that trackers from sites like Breitbart could also be used by companies like Cambridge Analytica to follow people around the web and then, via Facebook, target them with ads." Go to: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage For full article....
..and again from "The Guardian", quote; "The US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency played a key role in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the Observer has learned.
It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission*." Go to: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit For full article.

*Italics mine.
 
SERCO?
 
Quote; "Why has Serco been awarded the contract to continue running Yarl’s Wood? Yarl’s Wood is the notorious immigration removal centre for women (mainly) in Bedfordshire; and in 2013, Serco was outed by The Guardian as “the company that is running Britain”. Increasingly, it seems to be running the world, employing 120,000 people in 30 countries, and providing services as diverse as driving tests in Canada, air traffic control in the United Arab Emirates, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in the United States. With a portfolio like this, you might think that Serco is universally acclaimed as a first-rate provider. Yet the announcement of the renewal of the Yarl’s Wood contract was greeted by widespread disapproval.  Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, was quoted in The Independent expressing disappointment that the contract had been renewed before an independent inquiry into the running of Yarl’s Wood had taken place, pointing out that “too often, Serco’s Yarl’s Wood operation appears to have fallen below the high standards we would expect”." Go to: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/why-has-serco-been-awarded-contract-continue-running-yarl-s-wood  For full article.

Quote; "Serco run navy patrol boats for the ADF, as well as search and salvage operations through their partnership with P&O which form Maritime Defence Services.
Serco run two Australian Jails already, Acacia in WA and Borallon in Queensland
Theyre one of the biggest companies In the UK for running electronic tagging of offenders under house arrest or parole.
Serco are in one of the two favoured bid consortiums for the new Sydney metro rail line.
Here are some amazing corporate videos from Serco, we fully recommend both if you're a fan of Verhoeven-esque corporate propaganda." Go to: https://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/serco-the-biggest-company-youve-never-heard-of-mirror-whoops-looks-like-i-opened-a-can-of-worms-with-my-question-about-this-company-j/
For full article and: http://www.abeldanger.net/2017/02/2912-can-trump-purge-fake-news-sercos.html#more (thank you for leaving the link as comment "AD"!)

Arafel; "Ex-Lloyds Libor traders hauled in by fraud squad as part of its ongoing probe into manipulation of the benchmark rate" Go to: http://www.cityam.com/260120/ex-lloyds-libor-traders-hauled-fraud-squad-part-its-ongoing?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=dvTwitter



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