The Cambridge Analytica scandal gets murkier by the day and now it wends its way from some data wizards in a walk-up shop in Victoria through Republican America (Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon, John Bolton and Corey Lewandowski) to Britain and right into the Conservative government of Theresa May and her unruly duo, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson and the rigged Brexit referendum that will pull Britain out of the European Union.
While the mainstream media have been picking away at the story, The Guardian stands head and shoulders above every one else. Now they're chipping away at the secretive Canadian operation, AggregateIQ, established by Cambridge whistleblower Chris Wylie and a couple of his hometown pals.
This is a story of connections between a host of dubious characters in high places that reaches from Canada's west coast to Washington to London. It's as complex as it is fascinating.
26 comments:
.. presume Robert Mueller has delegated a crack investigator and/or team to appraise this reality.. This aint going away.. and as Bruce Cockburn sang.. 'The Problem With Normal Is It Always Gets Worse'.. this is truly twisted assault on 'public service' .. inhale a shaker of salt with a double tequila shot of 'public service' .. which left the building before Elvis.. I still hope that someone will come from the weeds and reveal the extent of the Harper Government black ops.. election 'war room'.. there was a plan.. there were planners.. but as mainstream media proclaimed.. some 250 federal ridings hit by live and robo calling, polls, vote moving.. was 'hijinks' .. I like that term 'hijinks' .. its a flaming halloweeny bag of dog poop on a neighbor's porch.. The election fraud was deeper darker and Canadians paid for it.. our elected government buried it at midnight
Not bad for the Guardian. Establishment-approved.
I follow Jonathan Cook, who used to work for the Guardian, and now wrings his hands in despair at their establishment ways. And of course, the Offguardian website with ex-Grauniad reporters takes them down regularly. As does Medialens.
https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/03/how-the-guardian-became-the-wests-pravada/
Here is an article that gives background to Cambridge Analytica itself going back to the Gulf War, which I find interesting as background to the small fry Canadian outfit and the pink-haired dude Wylie:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49117.htm
Last week you linked an illogical, to me, article about conspiracy nuts, where some American deigned to lecture the masses that if you believe one conspiracy theory, then you must believe them all. No nuances allowed. Which is of course utter illogical bullshit, but not bad as a template for a HS principal to lay down the law to wayward students. I am not a student, and will not be lectured at when I can see fallacies in a crappy argument delivered as a sermon from on high from a self-appointed expert.
For my part, I find the nutcases who believe in 9/11 US government involvement crazy. They also think all the mass shootings/truck rampages/Boston Marathon bombings are staged by actors. Nutballs to a person, those people, led by a delusional Paul Craig Roberts.
But do I believe that the Russkies poisoned Skripal? Not a chance. The Ramsay article on CA linked above shows the mindset of the Brit right wing and brainiacs of the Boris variety. Offguardian and Craig Murray don't buy the official line either, and Moon of Alabama knocks Novichok availability on its head:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49116.htm
It's one thing to suffer from Russophobia on account of dislike for Trump, quite another to disregard Canadian MSM, but somehow lend credence to the corporatist/neocon/Hillary fairy dust agenda pumped out by the NYT and Wapo, or indeed the Guardian. Is there some magic that confers believability to these corporate rags, just because they're not "quite" the usual pap released for mass consumption by our government and intoned on our home media, but are "respectable" foreign journals? Not logical, and there was a great post on progblog about critical thinking just a few days ago to roil the waters of how people fool themselves.
BM
Sal, I don't think anyone with the means has any interest in re-opening Harper's campaign tricks or the Liberals' for that matter. It isn't going to happen.
BM, sorry, haven't got time to go through your screed.
.. agreed Mound but my point is a whistleblower can appear long after the fact.. Whylie is an example. They may wait in the weeds a long time, then boom.. and if they have documents, data, a thumb drive full.. whatever.. bueno. I aint asking much, but I would like to know who altered the Harper Party election voter data base access & log in files. I tried but failed in my attemp to follow BM's 'train of thought'
BM makes some good points. (I respect you for letting us "dissidents" continue to contribute here, but "screed"?)
I check the Guardian most days and I can see why GG abandoned ship and started the Intercept. (Pretty much run by dismal Blair-ites with a hard-on to destroy the best hope of the west, J.Corbyn.)
No mention of Russia in this article. (Kogan is mentioned but he is a UK prof at this point.)
In this latest (well documented) data scandal about CA/SCL/A.IQ/Facebook and its effect on Brexit/tRump, the Russian connection is very tangential.
As to who poisoned the DOUBLE-AGENT (who as a group have notoriously short life spans eh Smiley?), I don't know ... but the qui bono question asserts itself. The very suspect timing seems to be coincident with the beginning of this data scandal.
Curiouser and curiouser,
https://www.rt.com/news/422931-skripal-yulia-social-media/
and
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/
Some comments in Bella Caledonia are as interesting as the article.
TB
Mrs May; thou dost protest too much.
TB
Sal, imagine if every government knew it had whistleblowers that would eventually make all their skulduggery public? I suspect the behavioural and ethical transformation would be quick and dramatic.
The problem I have with ICH is that it's run/edited/curated by Tom Feely, an activist. He's advancing an activist agenda. He's grinding his axe which makes his judgment at least a bit suspect. The article that BM linked is a horrible bit of journalism. Read it for yourself. It rambles, backtracks, throws in completely irrelevant details plainly intended to colour the content. I studied journalism and practised the art for a number of years. I know crap when I read it. If you're predisposed to that sort of stuff I'm sure it all sounds enlightening and puts other media to shame. To me it's mainly boring.
Trailblazer for starters, if it involves the Skripal poisoning and it comes from RT, I can't take it seriously. C'mon, really?
And the second item about links between SCL, the military establishment and some Tories is hardly probative of Cambridge Analytica, how it came to be 90% owned by Robert Mercer (who goes completely unmentioned, or Steve Bannon, John Bolton, etc.). Until that cornucopia of names is somehow connected to what Cambridge did they're just names of the sort you would find on most defence contractors.
"...imagine if every government knew it had whistleblowers that would eventually make all their skulduggery public?
I'm a retired USG employee who blew the whistle on a Bush administration appointee who was obstructing official investigations related to the Iraq occupation. Luckily, the Democrats had just returned to power in CONgress and they were happy to have a Republican scalp to hang on the wall.
Yet in the long term what I and my 6 fellow whistleblowers did back then had ZERO effect. Washington today has become so much more corrupt in the past decade that the Bush years seem almost quaint by comparison.
Though I never suffered any official retaliation, I retired a few years ago and now have to wonder if the cancer I'm now battling was a result of all the stress. If do know that if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't.
I qgree, Karl, that Washington has grown palpably more corrupt over the last decade. I sense that but you lived it. Have the American people simply given up? How did they ever come to find this tolerable?
I studied in the US while the Viet Nam war was still raging. I got to know GI Bill students and those who were furiously protesting the war/draft. Both sides were deeply committed to American democracy. That love of country today seems to have declined into angry flag waving and division with each side not only distrustful but deeply hostile to the other. Some say it hasn't been this torn since the Civil War. I find it hard to believe this rift hasn't been at least partly engineered. I'd really like your thoughts on that.
This from Wonkette kind 'splains it all.
https://wonkette.com/632067/wingnuts-so-mad-george-soros-made-sinclair-spread-conservative-propaganda
Trailblazer for starters, if it involves the Skripal poisoning and it comes from RT, I can't take it seriously. C'mon, really?
Yeh' right!
The UK; the country that gave us 'sexed up' intelligence that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis!!!
The same country , when I was a youngster, told us the Mau mau were terrorists.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/mau-mau-uprising
Let's not discuss the American media who cheerleaded "us" into Iraq!
The same media who would, given the opportunity , do the same to North Korea.
Mound; for someone who, over the years, has suggested caution when it comes to the media , you are showing a bias.
TB
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/mccabe-amazon-and-defending-the-republic-from-donald-trump
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Is the gist of this article is accurate?
https://off-guardian.org/2018/03/30/skripal-poisoning-the-uks-case-for-russian-involvement/
Today's news from UK (cannot id the poison) gives it a lot of credibility.
it would all be a joke if it weren't so deadly
NPoV, I think you need fresh batteries for your bullshit detector.
Yes, Trailblazer, I am deeply skeptical about RT which is directly controlled by the Russian state. You like it, that's fine. Fill your boots.
As the Russia-did-it story evaporates before your eyes
"Boris Johnson under pressure to explain whether position has changed after tweet blaming Moscow is deleted"
you might want to check your own batteries.
indeed Putin has so much to hide he's "called an extraordinary meeting of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog "
This one
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/david-morrison/conclusive-evidence-of-russia-s-guilt-in-skripal-case-is-lacking
was written before the latest Boris-follies.
So, um . . . doesn't this mean that Britain is guilty of interfering in the American elections, a heinous act of war for which the Americans must sanction them and declare them to be Hitler?
Just to be clear--I was talking about the original "Cambridge Analytica" issue, which given CA's close ties with top British government figures strikes me as much better evidence for British government election meddling than anything I've yet seen is for Russian government election meddling.
Hey, PLG, no I don't think Washington can blame the Brits for election meddling. CA was sold (90%) to American billionaire, Robert Mercer, and was being managed to some degree by Bannon from 2013 onward.
Aw, C'mon MoS. What's hysteria for the goose should be hysteria for the gander. And consider: I'm sure the Guardian and even the BBC had tons of stuff to say mocking Trump in the runup to election. Blatant interference--let slip the dogs of war, I say!
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