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Grant
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| despise Russia for being a Godawful country with a Godawful foreign policy |
Since 1990 Russia has given up its empire - and communism - and put the hand of friendship out to the west. In return we have recruited Russia's former empire into NATO, organized an unlawful coup in Ukraine and helped ISIS in Syria to fight Russia!
No wonder Putin is angry.
And we haven't done these things because of Russia's Godawful foreign policy. We've done them because Russia is an Orthodox Christian state.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Oh dear, Grant, you came so close.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Scottie, if you want to launch a conspiracy theory, here's one
1. Cambridge Analytica's origins were in the security services
2. When Facebook went in to 'inspect the books' they were prevented from doing so by a British regulatory body.
3. That same regulatory body said this was because they had applied for a warrant to do their own inspection
4. Despite warrants being issued if necessary within five minutes, and despite the entire world watching on, this warrant has still not been issued.
5. Leaving plenty of time for Cambridge Analytica to get their books in order.
You didn't hear it here first.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Europe is being taken over by extreme populist parties.....
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk
Meanwhile latest British polls are back to two (two and a bit) party system. Ukip is now within the statistical error of extinction.
You might reasonably conclude that getting out of Europe is the way to go, that is if you want to kill off populist discontent.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Scottie, if you want to launch a conspiracy theory, here's one |
..but this way you get to do the theorising and I take the blame.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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'Honour', dear boy, 'honour', not blame.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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| When Facebook went in to 'inspect the books' |
I actually have my own theory regarding the Facebook scandal (you've probably guessed I would have already no doubt lol). Namely that it's a completely manufactured scandal created with the aim of bringing in legislation to regulate the Internet more heavily.
Thing is, there are already claims that Facebook itself is a creation of the intelligence agencies. Just Google "Facebook Darpa" or "Facebook CIA" to get a classic "conspiracy theory" overview. I don't really have a fixed position on whether these claims are true or false, but I'm quite sympathetic to this theory simply because I remember watching the rise of Facebook.
There were lots of Facebook type sites such as MySpace long before Facebook came on the scene. Facebook was simply promoted and financed to prominence. MySpace was quite empowering - it gave everyone their own little platform to share information. It was also really good for sharing information peer to peer, or in little groups or networks. Facebook looked like a police database, especially in the early days. (Even the names alone are suggestive of this. MySpace suggests it belongs to you. Facebook brings to mind those little books of criminal mugshots victims flick through in American cop shows.)
Then of course they had the Facebook movie which completely rewrote history. Now Zuckerberg is portrayed as the guy who pretty much invented the concept of the social-networking site. Anyone old enough to remember the multitude of other social networking sites that existed before Facebook knows that Facebook was just another imitation, but this is how history gets rewritten by the media.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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Another interesting thing regarding Facebook is that it bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014. Now WhatsApp is the app of choice for our MPs. You may remember Grant Shapps famously being left out of the Tory WhatsApp group last year.
People assume all their private conversations on WhatsApp are safe and encrypted, but again how would you really know. Unless you're an expert on cryptography you just have to take it on faith. How would you know there isn't some backdoor in the software? Now I'm not saying there is, but the point is I can't know. Not without years of expertise at least. Personally I always just assume that every private conversation is potentially hackable. I doubt our politicians are as cautious though.
I wonder if they drop WhatsApp as well when they start grilling Zuckerberg over Facebook? Most probably don't even realise Facebook owns it. Much like how people often don't realise newspapers and TV networks are often owned by the same corporation, even though the knowledge is publicly available.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| N R Scott wrote: | | When Facebook went in to 'inspect the books' |
I actually have my own theory regarding the Facebook scandal |
Get in line.
Here's mine.
The clue is that Facebook is being outed for having worked with a Republican firm. Meanwhile, Google and Twitter all all-in with cooperating with the DNC and the organized Left.
Facebook is being punished for its very limited resistance to total leftist control. Facebook cooperated 99% but that last little 1% of resistance had to be crushed with an iron fist.
So let it be done.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I actually have my own theory regarding the Facebook scandal (you've probably guessed I would have already no doubt lol). Namely that it's a completely manufactured scandal created with the aim of bringing in legislation to regulate the Internet more heavily. |
Would that be US or British legislation? Or are they the same thing?
| Thing is, there are already claims that Facebook itself is a creation of the intelligence agencies. Just Google "Facebook Darpa" or "Facebook CIA" to get a classic "conspiracy theory" overview. I don't really have a fixed position on whether these claims are true or false, |
This is why AE forbids the agnostic position. Anybody over the age of six knows this is unlikely in the extreme but people who’d like it to be true can say, “Well, it could be.â€
but I'm quite sympathetic to this theory simply because I remember watching the rise of Facebook.
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Like our own dear Scottie.
There were lots of Facebook type sites such as MySpace long before Facebook came on the scene. Facebook was simply promoted and financed to prominence.
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These dudes have the power to create the world's biggest whatever it is? Blimey, we might as well all give up.
| Then of course they had the Facebook movie which completely rewrote history. |
Hold up! As Ishmael will tell you, Hollywood is the Left Opposition.
| Another interesting thing regarding Facebook is that it bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014. Now WhatsApp is the app of choice for our MPs. You may remember Grant Shapps famously being left out of the Tory WhatsApp group last year. |
How very far-sighted of them. MP’s are always years behind tech-wise. None of them would even have heard of Whatsapp in 2014.
| I wonder if they drop WhatsApp as well when they start grilling Zuckerberg over Facebook? Most probably don't even realise Facebook owns it. Much like how people often don't realise newspapers and TV networks are often owned by the same corporation, even though the knowledge is publicly available. |
Except those MP’s on the Media and Culture committee whose full time job it is. And every other MP whose full time job is to keep track of who owns what in the media, the chief tool of their trade.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Ishmael wrote: | | The clue is that Facebook is being outed for having worked with a Republican firm. Meanwhile, Google and Twitter all all-in with cooperating with the DNC and the organized Left. |
The irony is that Facebook got the work with the Republican firm (a) after not protesting too much at being offered money for access to data (b) boasting that they had already done the same for the Obama Democrats a few years earlier.
Loveable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data, published IM transcripts show. Facebook hasn't disputed the authenticity of the transcript. Zuckerberg was chatting with an unnamed friend, apparently in early 2004. Business Insider, which has a series of quite juicy anecdotes about Facebook's early days, takes the credit for this one.
The exchange apparently ran like this:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks |
http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T
Facebook had been promoting itself to political parties looking for a new way to reach voters. In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends.
According to a July 2012 MIT Technology Review article, when you installed the app, "it said it would grab information about my friends: their birth dates, locations, and 'likes.' "
The campaign boasted that more than a million people downloaded the app, which, given an average friend-list size of 190, means that as many as 190 million had at least some of their Facebook data vacuumed up by the Obama campaign — without their knowledge or consent. |
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scandal-trump-election-obama-2012/
Facebook's own advert:
| Facebook Apps Bring the Power of Friends to the Political Process |
https://www.facebook.com/notes/government-and-politics-on-facebook/facebook-apps-bring-the-power-of-friends-to-the-political-process/10150994792695882/
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Would that be US or British legislation? Or are they the same thing? |
I was thinking Britain, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were both. Almost exactly a year ago Amber Rudd was demanding that WhatsApp have some kind of backdoor to get around encryption after the London terror attack. So the desire's there in the UK at least.
| This is why AE forbids the agnostic position. Anybody over the age of six knows this is unlikely in the extreme but people who’d like it to be true can say, “Well, it could be.†|
This is a fair enough comment. Though I disagree with the "unlikely in the extreme". The CIA has been creating front operations and co-opting already existing media companies pretty much from its inception.
This is quite a good example.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War.
The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world. |
| These dudes have the power to create the world's biggest whatever it is? Blimey, we might as well all give up. |
Again this ties in with the above. The power is quite impressive. When we look at Russia everyone generally agrees that the real power lies with the KGB or its modern equivalent, and that before Putin came along and ruled as a "strongman" the country was run not openly by its politicians, but behind the scenes by the ultra-rich oligarchs. It's similar in the west, just more evolved and sophisticated. We have our own oligarchs - in fact, it could be argued that our bigger oligarchs bankrolled the Russian oligarchs in the 90's - we just don't see it.
| Hollywood is the Left Opposition. |
If they're prepared to co-opt Jackson Pollock and friends then why not Hollywood too.
| How very far-sighted of them. MP’s are always years behind tech-wise. None of them would even have heard of Whatsapp in 2014. |
I'm not suggesting they bought it specifically to spy on British MPs. Just the possibility that this might have been an added bonus. Again I don't have a fixed position. Ishmael's view point may be a better bet. In fact, I've just seen on the news that advertisers are planning to pull out of Facebook - this is the exact same action that eventually brought YouTube into line. So this lends weight to Ishmael's interpretation.
| Except those MP’s on the Media and Culture committee whose full time job it is. And every other MP whose full time job is to keep track of who owns what in the media, the chief tool of their trade. |
I'd like to have your faith, but I've just watched those same people compare Putin to Hitler.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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Also returning to the conspiracy theory challenge. I think this example must surely fit the criteria.
The Nayirah testimony
| The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old girl who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-Ṣabaḥ and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
In her false testimony she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of their incubators and leaving them to die. This is a classic and universally acknowledged example of what we would now call a "crisis actor". Though the term wasn't in common use back then.
Her testimony can be seen here. It's quite an eye opener when you consider that what you're watching is a complete fabrication.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| N R Scott wrote: | | In her false testimony she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of their incubators and leaving them to die. This is a classic and universally acknowledged example of what we would now call a "crisis actor". |
It's also the singular example invariably cited by the crisis actor conspiracy types.
In reality, she was no crisis actor. She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador and a Kuwaiti Patriot---doing her duty to get her country liberated with liberal use of propaganda. Hell. She might have even believed it. Knowing as we do now what Iraqis are capable of, who can doubt they could have done exactly as she claimed
Perhaps she heard the story in reports and rumors relayed by family. Like many do who repeat such tales, they feel the need to make themselves the witness, to lend the story the credibility they believe in their hearts that it deserves. That's what makes telling lies in these situations so very easy.
Hell. I've heard the Irish make the very same accusations of Cromwell. But who can believe the Irish?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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I've already won the Conspiracy Challenge. Obama's BC is a forgery.
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