Analyzing Social Perception In Real Time–Part 1

Welcome To A Live Op.

Now that the largest part of the election is over, and we have multiple boycotts along with the typical rioting in the streets and felony behavior on the part of the leftist loons, we can revisit the wonderful world of psychographic segmentation.

Cambridge Analytica Resurfaces With A BOOM!

So, Forbes had an article this past week about how Jared Kushner won the election for Trump using social media, thanks to a crash basic training course in my field–psychographic segmentation and mass perception management. When I’m not writing professionally, I catalog, analyse and archive data. Some for tin foil hatters, some for marketing firms, some for cultural anthropologists…

You may remember (if you don’t read the rest of the articles in this part of the blog) That Robert Mercer, the reclusive mystery man behind Cambridge Analytica was supporting Ted Cruz, the Banker’s Husband. Given that Mercer owes BILLIONS–not millions–to the IRS and Ted wanted to abolish the income tax, this was a good investment. Thankfully, the Banker’s Husband was finally defeated. Cambridge Analytica was also hired for straight marketing work by Dr Ben Carson and literally hundreds of other politicians nationwide–as political candidates are what they market these days.

AND THAT SHOULD REALLY WORRY YOU. READ THE ARCHIVES.

C.A., Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner

I began keeping an eye on Jared the first time he appeared on the campaign trail. I was familiar with some of his history, and was simply curious about what kind of guy Ivanka’s hubbie was.Then, when the Banker’s Husband went down in flames and Mercer got behind TRUMP, I started digging deep and archiving EVERYTHING campaign related.

This was shortly before the tone of the online campaign changes dramatically. So I knew C.A. had a team in place. How? “FINGERPRINTS”. You see, each company in this field uses different algorithms and metrics, and therefore, you can ID everyone playing in a particular exercise. So, C.A. was back–but who was the point man?

The Speech That Exposed The Point Man–AIPAC.

About the same time C.A. came n board, semantic analysis led me to believe that someone was polishing up Trump’s speeches–actually, 2 someones, a male and a female. The female was easy to spot, as Ivanka has a distinctive style. But weeks of analysis had led nowhere in identifying the male in the picture. Then came AIPAC, and the male behind the speech was obvious–Jared Kushner. This has since been verified by the article in Bloomberg.

And if I hadn’t been over thinking–I would have figured it out a lot sooner. After all, who better to be the male voice than Ivanka’s husband? Intelligent, educated, lives with her all the time, family member.

Rule 1: CONSIDER WHAT YOU KNOW.

Rule 2: DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS.

Having broken both rules, I got back to work, and began extrapolating forward.

And Here We Are, In A Live Operation….

I’ll get back to everything between AIPAC and now in later articles. But at the moment, we’re looking at a live operation. And here is what we know:

1. George Soros and the DNC, through a large number of shell “grassroots” groups, are causing mayhem with the riots.
2. The obama administration, far from stepping in to stop this, is encouraging it, while Hillary remains silent, despite claiming in the last debate that anyone not willing to accept the results of the election is a “threat to democracy”.
3. Deliberate assassination of police officers is rising.
4. The MSM is spreading misinformation/disinformation as fast as they can create it.
5. A large number of brand new “fake news” right wing websites are churning out FAKE NEWS–and the MSM is blaming those sites on Russian Federation scam artists making cash from the Adsense ads–true in some cases, blatantly false in others.
6. Trump’s transition team is hard at work, ahead of schedule.

That’s the “short list”, of course. So what are Cambridge Analytica, Booz Allen Hamilton, The Tin Foil Hat analysts, the Trump social media team under Jared, and I, doing?

WE ARE ANALYZING EVERY WORD YOU TYPE. AND EVERY HASHTAG. Despite google and Twitter, and Facebook, there are ways to determine how well and fast a hashtag propagates other than their “trending” features–which are misinformation tools to begin with.

While I have no doubt whatsoever SOME of these people are doing deep analysis–looking for the real radicals on both sides, scraping identity information, and more, most of us are just compiling aggregate data, and mapping the data points.

If you think of each data point as a color coded PIXEL–and you keep adding more data points–you go from a stick figure to a photograph. And that photograph gives the experts a way to foretell the future. It gives the media disinformation/misinformation creation teams the tools they need to tailor the “news”, for maximum acceptance. It gives the Trump Team intel on their base’s sentiments, while they walk the tightrope over the political volcano without falling in and being consumed.

AND IT GIVES THE OPPOSITION TOOLS TO USE AGAINST US. 

So, everyone–watch your words and choice of memes/videos. Because everything we’re doing now online–including my writing this article, that will be tagged to stand out like a lighthouse beacon–is being noted and analysed. AND THIS WILL–NOT CAN, WILL–BE USED AGAINST US. This is more than your average election. This is a very deadly game, behind the scenes. Literally TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in revenue covering dozens of industry sectors is on the line, and people have been killed for far less than that.

I’ll continue this after the turkey.

Cui Bono? GOPers, The Uniparty, and Ted Cruz

Part and parcel of the so called “delegate stealing” is who is actually doing the stealing for Ted Cruz. The answer is, of course, the GOPers. So why in the world would the GOPers be busily rigging the convention for Cruz, with the help of the rest of the uniparty and the media?

Cruz, Kleptocrat Acting As “The Outsider”

Ted Cruz positioned himself as an “outsider”, an anti-establishment candidate whose message is tailored to fit the smallest segment of the GOP–the hard line religious far right. The fact that he isn’t now, nor has he ever been, a “Constitutional Conservative, Anti-Establishment Christian” is irrelevant. Politics is a form of theater, at this point, and Cruz has the bona fides to pass himself off as all the aforementioned things, as long as you sort of cross your eyes and squint real hard when you look at him.

The GOPers know that, of course. It didn’t escape their attention that Cruz’s biggest single money man is Robert Mercer, hedge fund guru and epic tax dodger. It hasn’t escaped their attention that the PACS funding him are stuffed with big banking, big oil, and big business.And they definitely sat u and took notice when Mercer brought along with his endorsement, Cambridge Analytica and a large financial stake in the former king of “conservative alternative/independent media”, Breitbart.

What Cruz Means To The Uniparty

We talked a while back about bargain basement prices on psy-ops and mass perception management, and coups and regime changes. Currently, the government’s home team is a firm named Booz Allen Hamilton. BAH gets literally 99% of their money from the government, to the tune of around 70 billion dollars in 2015. Prior to Cambridge Analytica becoming a major player in America a few years ago, BAH, had precious little competition when it came to government projects.

Now, on the other hand, the government has the potential to acquire the services of a company whose psy-op, mass perception manipulation, and regime changing skills make old BAH look pathetic, at very favorable rates. BAH would still be useful, of course, as they perform many other services for the government outside of their work in intelligence and psy-ops. But why use a distant third place company for the important work, when you can get the best?

So–Cui Bono? Who Benefits?

If the GOPers can keep enough people uninformed about Ted Cruz, his big money connections, his extremely fringe religious endorsements and supporters, and his unconstitutional voting record,  they could take the White House, and the uniparty kleptocracy would have a data mining firm at their disposal that already possesses data the NSA envies. Beyond that, they would have a president that is more than willing to violate every promise he makes to his voters, and apparently has no qualms at all when it comes to using the people’s data against them on a regular basis.

Sure, they’d probably have to come to an agreement with Mercer and write of the majority of his multi-billion dollar tax bill (if not all of it). They’d also have to tolerate having Cruz as president for 4-8 years. But that’s a small price to pay when you’re looking at data acquisition of such massive proportions, and the personnel to best use that data to further their agenda. Cruz benefits, as he gets one of the two jobs he wants (president), while still leaving the door open for the other (SCOTUS Justice). Mercer benefits, as he is deep in the mix of American politics, and can move forward with whatever his own agenda is–something nobody really knows as he is so reclusive, but probably isn’t a good one, as he is a pure technocrat.

Cambridge Analytica and their parent company SCL Group benefit, as they have the power of the government behind them, a guaranteed source of major income, and can flex their muscles and refine their political candidate electing tools. Not to mention the fact that our government is in a way addicted to “nation building”, so they’ll have all kinds of interesting projects to occupy them between election cycles.

The losers are, of course, the American people as a group, and the Republic on the whole. But the kleptocrats and technocrats aren’t really concerned about that. After all, people are a useful resource, but hardly a rare commodity. And in the scope of their plans, we the people are typically either collateral damage, or acceptable losses.

 

Elegance, Context, And Bach

Music isn’t typically considered something that requires a context, as much as it is a contextual element. Music, like everything else in the universe, does have a mathematical component. As such, it can easily be incorporated into a contextual framework.

However, there are times when providing a visual context for a piece of music can greatly enhance not only the enjoyment of the piece, but the understanding of the underlying structure. In this post, I’ll be showing you how context can enhance the understanding of musical structure, and in the next, we’ll look at music as a contextual element.

Bach To The Basics.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed music in a time when form, symmetry and structure of a piece was one of the most important components a composer addressed, and it is beautifully illustrated in a short piece he wrote, according to history, in a half an afternoon.

As played here, with minimal context, the piece is simple, but beautiful. Balanced, delicate, and light. A Canon is a piece of music that is highly structured, and as there are multiple elements that can be introduced, the composer could achieve an amazing diversity within the rigid structure of the style. A Crab canon is also called a “retrograde” canon, as the leader is reading the music left to right, while an accompanying musical instrument (or the “other hand” on a piano)  is reading from right to left. Crab canons may also include “inversion”, where one set of notes is rising while another is falling.

The Canon Structure

Canons can range from the simple canon, a “round” like “Row , Row, Row Your Boat”, to complex Baroque pieces employing retrograde, inverse, and several varieties of contrapuntal motion; everything from parallel (the note spaced evenly apart in pitch and rising or falling) and oblique (one note remaining the same while another rises and falls in relation to it), to the “species counterpoint” found in fugues. BTW, a “species counterpoint” is when you start with one simple progression or melody, and add a second, third, and fourth, while still maintaining structure and harmony.

Now that you have heard the Crab Canon with minimal context, let’s watch the Canon in action:

 

The simple addition of animation allows you to “follow” the piece, and better appreciate the structure in a way that the sheet music alone doesn’t, unless of course you can read sheet music :-). Even then, the Moebius effect isn’t evident at first.

Then there is Pachelbel….

In this very familiar piece, you’ll see nearly every possible form of contrapuntal construction; parallel, oblique, inverse, and species are all represented. Note that the more complex animation used, “Synthesia” is actually a teaching tool. If you look around on You Tube, you’ll find literally thousands of complex piano pieces translated into this format, typically in different speeds–this one is 100%, but it is available as slow as 30% of full speed.

The growth of synthesia is part of an overall trend in learning and multi-sensory knowledge integration known as “gamification”, something we’ll be referring to more often as this series progresses. Gamification has been used for everything from teaching piano to collecting data in political campaigns, with Ted Cruz’s Cruz Crew App being the first example of a truly sophisticated data mining program disguised as a game.

Gamification works because it fully engages the subject, creating an immersive, personal experience in a way that is instructive, and in many cases, mildly addictive as well. Combining a zero risk environment, strong audio and visual cues and carefully spaced “rewards”, gamification provides an ideal vehicle for enhancing and delivering a project over time.

Personally, I prefer Pachelbel.

 

Public perception, Reality, And Narratives: The Tabula Rasa

In a long term project, there will be a certain amount of elegance involved simply because of the type of math that governs complex systems. Climate is an example of a complex system–in the short term, it can appear chaotic, or “fragile”–easily influenced by behavior within it. Taken in its proper context, however, in this case the amount of time Earth has been covered with life,  the available data shows that this is a meta-stable complex system, like the rest of the universe, and therefore unlikely to be derailed by the actions of those operating in a small subset or segment of the system.

Long term projects can be designed with tightly defined goals, broad goals or as an open ended project to be altered over time as it matures. If, for instance, you were in a “Foundation” situation, as laid out by Isaac Assimov, you would design a project that allowed for intervention at certain intervals, or had multiple elegant segments designed to be brought into play if certain combinations of events happened together.

The Foundation Series Overview.

Hari Seldon invented what he called “psychohistory” the branch of math that quantifies the behavior of large groups of people, and uses predictive analysis and scaling to determine “what happens next”. Seldon found that the Empire was dying, and that if intervention didn’t happen, the dark ages would last a long, long time. By carefully analyzing what he had available, he designed a series of elegant segments that could be used at certain points, “Seldon Crises”, that would yield a solution to the conditions at that time and shorten the time frame of the dark ages.

His tapes were stored in a vault at the Foundation facility, where the inhabitants were hard at work compiling a Galactic Encyclopedia. While they didn’t know it, their work was essentially a cover–a useful thing to do that preserved knowledge and encouraged maximum interaction among the planets, without endangering the project going on at the Second Foundation–the home of the math geeks.

This is an open ended project, as the final outcome was never revealed, and Seldon himself might not have seen what the final outcome was in terms of humanity. As such, on the “micro” scale–the individual planets of the empire and others–things seemed pretty disorganized and chaotic at times. But on the macro-scale, this was a meta-stable system, and very elegant given the extreme time frames. It should be noted that when Assimov wasn’t writing amazing science fiction, he was a noted scientist, mathematician and all around genius. So he knew his stuff.

A Long Term Single Focus Project

So, for the fun of it, let’s say you wanted to force a regime change in a country–perhaps because you have nothing better to do. Or maybe your a technocrat, who wants to rule the world and make it better through tech and math. Or maybe you’re a theocrat, with visions of a God centered world. Or a kleptocrat, who really has no interest in what kind of country you live in, as long as the trains are on time, you have power, and you’re making money.

If you made a physical model of your project, it would look like a flexible funnel; a long, slender one. Along the way, if the very large mass of people made choices that were counter narrative, the funnel would stay about the same diameter. However, as more and more people began complying with the narrative, the number of “safe” choices begins to decrease.

Once the project passes a critical point, the endgame is absolutely inevitable. Unless you managed to dispose of every person, company, organization and information source following the narrative, you can’t stop the endgame itself, because you’re in the neck of the funnel. The question then becomes not whether you can stop the endgame, but how you should counter the endgame to create the most desirable outcome, given the circumstances.

The Tabula Rasa–The Ultimate Hard Reboot.

Once a country has entered the neck of the funnel, there will be an endgame. Because when math and “reality” are at odds, math wins. This is where a Tabula Rasa segment is the only viable answer to the equation, the project in play at the time. A Tabula Rasa is a very specialized elegant meme, that is constructed for a specific project, unlike other forms of elegant memes. A Tabula Rasa has some specific characteristics:

• It is as context free as possible. This is why it is called the Tabula Rasa, in this case; it’s a “blank slate”. A long term project that is designed to produce a specific outcome has built in balancing mechanisms–if the group does “A”, “B” will happen, through push back, blow back, or planned reaction. The project is also designed so that the most probable reactions can be seen well in advance, and planned for.
• It can be carried on in isolated instances, randomly, or coordinated to happen in multiple places under set circumstances. This way, anyone, anywhere, who feels a local circumstance calls for this solution, they can use it with near zero instruction, zero experience, and no specialized equipment or preparation.
• Because it has near zero contextual framing, it is easily internalized, rapidly personalized, and carries extreme psychological weighting. Thus, any attempt by the project team or the media to introduce a context will fail.
• Beyond the aspect of contextual framing failing, this segment is also, like a defiance meme or a standard elegant meme, self-propagating.  It is designed to be seen as a low risk expression. And as it is full internalized and personalized, the subject “owns” it, the urge to use it is heightened.

Some Working Examples Of A Tabula Rasa

This type of segment can be written–a phrase like “Who Is John Galt?” would be an example, if placed in a zero context environment, such as block printed in black on a white wall. The human brain is a big fan of context–a lack of context creates subconscious “anxiety”. So the subject who sees this particular example and is not familiar with the reference, will feel a mild curiosity the first time they see it.

If they see it again, on another wall, or a billboard, the compulsion to investigate will grow. Eventually, after the third random sighting, they will begin to ask people what it means, and find their way to the original reference. With the context provided, the anxiety is gone.

Any symbol can serve as a basic Tabula Rasa segment, if it is one that is relatively unknown, and always placed in a different context free setting. The more unusual it is, the better it works. A Peace sign, for example, does NOT work, because everyone recognizes it. But if you were to research old symbols, and find the Egyptian hieroglyph for “peace” and begin scattering that around, and could make it go viral, it would serve a purpose. It would both distract the subjects from the ongoing project and the direct impact it has on them, and it would also allow them to fully identify with the perspective once they find the “answer”.

The act of searching for the answer and being frustrated causes the mind to speculate on what might be at the end of the quest. The quest becomes personal, something that takes on a magnified importance. And when the end is reached, the value of the “secret knowledge” has an exaggerated significance, proportional to the effort required to find it.

 

A Tabula Rasa that is designed for a specific type of event is more challenging, as context can’t be avoided, as a rule. When this is the case, the context still must be kept as close to zero as possible. Anything over 1 element dilutes the effect. So on the rare occasions you see a pure example, with no explanation given, it will typically have only one symbolic element.

Never Explain The Unexplainable!

Many people recognize the visceral impact of a symbol or group of like symbols, with no context. Like this Image by David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net:

While this isn’t a pure Tabula Rasa, this picture of a military cemetery carries high psychological weight none the less. The Perspective is one of organized, regimented death. Because each stone is alike, each soldier, whether related to you or not, is internalized as “someone’s son or daughter, who died for my freedom”. The intent of this design is quite specific.

In a “civilian” cemetery, the symbols of “death” are personal–everything from simple headstones to weeping angels. These are individual people, and the stones and flowers are the personal perceptions of those who ordered them. They can also indicate social status, historical prominence, and other temporal attributes–for examples look at pictures of older cemeteries in the south and in the Northeast, where the Founding Families will often have elaborate crypts, inside fences, and there will frequently be sections–a “Jewish” section, a “pauper’s field”, etc. More than one PhD has been written when it comes to graveyard analysis :-).

In a military cemetery, the message is that all soldiers are of equal value. That death is not only inevitable, it is the great equalizer–the general may be placed next to the private. Here, we see the purest expression of military discipline–everything squared away,  impeccably maintained, ordered, cataloged, and inspection ready. Just as these soldiers stood in life, in formation awaiting the inspection of their commanding officer, they now are in formation in death.

The Perspective is one of order. The perception is personalized, internalized by those who visit the cemetery. For some, a military cemetery is far “creepier” then a private one–because it is so impersonal. Death is a creepy thing to begin with. Death with so little context can lead the mind into some very creepy places. To others, it is beautiful, often in a far more personal way than a private cemetery, precisely because they supply their own perception. And to the majority of people, a military cemetery produces a far more intense effect on the mind than a private one, like this one (Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net ):

Compare those two pictures yourself, and see which has a more powerful effect on you.

A Tabula Rasa with one contextual point is designed to fit very specific circumstances. And choosing the single context point is the hardest part of the design phase. The symbol most be one that is universally identifiable, but can still mean different things to different people depending on context. It has to be a symbol that can be fully internalized, and personalized. and any other context, such as a person holding a symbol, must be as neutral as possible.

A well designed segment of this type offers a strong symbol, with no contextual clues provided. As an example–the black monolith from the movie 2001:

What did it mean? More importantly–what did it mean to YOU? This was a very unique use of a Tabula Rasa, just as the ending sequence of the movie was. Beginning and ending a movie with something that is absolutely unexplained was a stroke of genius. If you asked 10000 people what they remembered the most from the movie, “the monolith”, and “the baby reaching out for Earth” or “the very end” would be the most common answers.

And every one of those people would likely offer you a different interpretation of them, also. Put a group of people together and ask them as a group what this means, and at the very least you’ll have an interesting dialogue. But the more likely result would be a rather heated discussion, with everyone defending their perception vigorously. And when the talking heads produce a documentary, with experts in symbology to tell you what the monolith and the baby mean, the result will inevitably be abysmal failure, simply because the odds of more than a small number of people agreeing on the meaning are vanishingly small.

In this case, Arthur Clarke himself said he had no idea what Stanley Kubrick was trying to say. And when Kubrick related what he had been trying to say, everyone disagreed with him. So, his personal project was an abject failure, but the Tabula Rasa he inadvertently created was a raving success.

When The Tabula Rasa Is Deployed:

It will just appear, from nowhere, with no explanation. As an example, a lone person, wearing only dark blue clothing, walks to the center of a grassy area in front of a public building and stands there. A few minutes later, he’s joined by someone else in dark blue, who stands an arm’s length away. Then a third. And a fourth.

By the time you get to six people in a row, passers by are stopping and watching.

When you get to a 6×6 square, people are taking video on smart phones, and tweeting. And in relatively short order, there is a news crew. When your display grows to 10×10, people begin moving into the display, trying to provoke reactions. Media are asking passers by for reactions, and trying to ask participants arriving what it is about.

When another display of the same type begins to form a distance away, the response time will be shorter, and the attempt to engage will be higher. And if displays of the same type begin appearing in other cities, the awareness and impact will be exponentially higher.

The debates will begin among the direct witnesses, and on twitter, and Facebook, and Reddit, but the odds are extremely small that the media will be able to successfully frame any narrative that is accepted by all, and disseminate it before it becomes invalid–because this segment  forces a rapid internalization by each subject, that then is personalized, and shared with others, creating massive discourse without consensus.

And when the right symbol is added to counter the project, the narrative is destroyed.

This is the essence of a successful Tabula Rasa segment–it derails the endgame for its target project because, from a very basic point of view, it takes two people to have an argument. And a project, at its deepest level, is an argument on one side of the equal sign, and a solution on the other. In this case, the base argument, the model, instead of being countered by a solution (like a demonstration, torches and pitchforks, tar and feathers, with arrests and other inevitable consequences) is countered by a cloud of infinite possibilities.

And as each person creates their own solution, the odds of the solution originally intended being accepted gets smaller–as do the odds that the project team’s planned counters for the planned actions of the people will be deployed at all.

 

 

Public Perception, Reality, and Narratives: Basic Elegant Segment Types

In the last section, we discussed the elegant segment. Elegant segments are the ones most typically used in short term projects, for testing the progress of a project, and for “one time” or spontaneous projects, because they are elegant, and anyone can use them.

A “talking point”, for instance, is an elegant segment. Once a “talking point” or “label” has taken hold in the public perception, it becomes an elegant segment, in that it can’t be countered for all intents and purposes. Examples currently being used would include the typical “racist”, “islamophobe”, “white privilege”, “gender is not dependent on sex”, etc.

Hey–Those Aren’t Elegant, I Counter Them All The Time!

No, you don’t.

You can counter these on a personal level, in a small group of people, in a non-charged, neutral or nearly neutral environment. But at a highly charged political rally being held by a controversial figure, when you are confronting a paid protester who calls you “racist”, if you make the news, you own the label. True, you own the label in the eyes of millions of people you’ll never meet, but you still own it. Not only that, everyone else in the building owns it, because they are cheering you on and chanting….And everyone ELSE who tries to counter after the fact runs a high risk of owning the label as well, and further solidifying the public perception.

And in the case of this particular example, How did you answer the protester??

To answer them AT ALL is to claim ownership of the label, because that is how the project was designed to work. The project in play right now is an either/or option halving project, with the simplest of decision trees. When facing this type of segment, the only viable option is ignore, and shut up.

Fortunately, over use of this type of segment by the untrained leads to a certain level of desensitization and eventually, the talking point can be automatically dismissed by enough people that it loses the ability to shame subjects into remaining on narrative.

Handling Aggressive Deflection Segments: A Practical Example.

You go to a TV station to be interviewed about something. The interviewer constantly interrupts, deflects, distracts, misquotes, and does all they can to trip you up. This is an example of an aggressive deflection segment. It’s designed to make the subject appear incompetent, or trigger an aggressive reaction to further a negative mass perception of the subject.The best response to this type of segment is:

• Stop talking. Cross one leg over the other, your ankle on the opposite knee, and lace your hands around the bent knee. Tilt your head slightly, and look at your interviewer as though they are slowly growing huge pimples all over their face. Aim for a half quizzical, half incredulous expression. Body language and facial expression are crucial here, to further the contextual framework you are trying to build.
• Once they stop talking, answer their question. 
• As soon as they interrupt your answer, repeat the process.

What you are doing here is constructing, on the fly, a real time opposing contextual framework. This person asked you to come to an interview, ostensibly to get your opinion or have you share your knowledge. You arrived in good faith, more than willing to educate and inform. So why is this strange person talking to themselves??? Inquiring minds want to know…

• The third time you do this–not 4th, not 2nd, but THIRD (it takes 3 impressions to create a context) BEFORE you answer the question, you say “If you’re done talking to yourself, I’d like to get on with the interview without further interruption.”
• DON’T wait for their answer–Immediately restate the question ” I believe you asked if I am in favor of cap and trade to reduce CO2 emissions, is that correct?”
• If they try to go off again, hold up your hand and say “Excuse me. I asked you if that was your question. Is it?”
• Once you get an affirmative, give a short, definitive answer with no digressions at all: “I am not in favor of cap and trade. As we have seen in the EU, cap and trade is just a means to sell the right to pollute to people. Also, the real problem isn’t CO2, it’s methane, which is far more persistent and far worse for the environment, and the major source of methane is bovine flatulence. Now if you can come up with a practical way to tax cows for farting, I would be willing to entertain it, of course, but at the moment that makes as much sense as cap and trade.”
• Then sit back and wait for the next question.

This particular segment works very effectively in any hostile interview/debate scenario, from jobs to deal making. By using the right body language and the right “talking points”, you show the disinterested observer an opposing narrative powerful enough to create a WTF?? moment, and you show the interested observer that your are in command, and the interviewer is clearly trying to further a narrative.

The Aggressive Deflection Segment in An Event Context.

The aggressive deflection segment when used in highly charged atmospheres, like political rallies and concerts, is an enhancement device/trigger and a test segment as well. It furthers a narrative, creates a self fulfilling narrative, and also propagates. In this case, political rallies, after the third rally with protesters the narrative and contextual framing has been set:

• The candidate is having a rally. Because the last rallies have had protesters, this one will also have protesters. The MSM furthers this narrative by speculating in advance of the rally whether violence will occur “again”. They will also film any protesters outside before they film rally goers.
• Once the rally begins, the cameras will be positioned to downplay the supporters’ numbers, and as soon as a disturbance starts, the cameras will record the disturbance in close up mode, to create the maximum contextual reference framing.
• By use of language in subsequent reports, written and video, the MSM will discuss in depth Why these protests only happen with one candidate, what the motivations are, and use the analysis opportunity to introduce reasons people might want to protest in the future. This is done to further propagation–someone who might not be inclined to go and protest for reason A, might be willing to go and protest when reason B is presented. So you get more protesters, and the implication that there is more “wrong” with this candidate than people initially thought.
• And each subsequent negative event further cements in the public perception the negative image of the candidate, and by extension their supporters. Once a certain saturation level is reached, the narrative is no longer needed–a large segment of the voting population is firmly convinced, no matter what evidence exists to the contrary, that the candidate and their followers are (insert talking point of choice here).

The Defiance Meme As A Means To Counter or Further Narratives.

Another example of an elegant segment is the defiance meme. This segment is typically a test segment used by opposing players, to determine how far along the running project is, and also to measure whether a useful level of push back to the running project is present.

As an example, during the recent government shutdown, the president chose to close national parks and monuments. There was an outcry, because there had been shutdowns in the past and those places had remained open. As a further trigger, the government effectively imprisoned  tourists in Montana near Yosemite and employees in the Grand Canyon National Park, something the MSM was very careful to mention as little as possible. This action was another example of the plug and play elegant trigger test used in the Land Grab narrative and other events, to determine how the public would view the government essentially holding both American citizens and foreign nationals without due process. 

There was enough push back to the Grand Canyon to force the governor to open the park, after negotiating a deal with the federal government. But there was another push back that caught on as a grass roots uprising–the defiance memes. When the parks closed, a group of 30 specialists saw a chance to run a defiance meme, and did so.

Selfies started appearing of people in National parks and other closed monuments, next to the closure signs. Many of them were holding signs with phases like “tear down the Barack-cades” (a play on obama’s first name, obviously). Within a matter of a day or two, the number had risen to over 500. By day three, it was over 1000 separate memes, and shares were increasing exponentially. Sadly, the congress caved and the shutdown ended.

Why sadly? Because defiance memes serve a valuable purpose in countering a narrative. A well designed defiance meme has several defining characteristics:

• It addresses a controversial or populist topic–in the mentioned case, the resentment engendered by park closures when it was n’t necessary.
• It involves little or no risk of serious consequences–it will be either anonymous, like the current #The Chalkening defiance meme that allows secret Trump supporters to emotionally invest in the campaign, or very little consequence, as in the case of the National Parks meme, as there were no law enforcement agencies saying they would issue fines/tickets, and if they did, it was a civil infraction.
• It allows people to “make a stand” in a non-threatening way.
• And it opens the door psychologically in the subject. Engaging in defiance meme projects like #TheChalkening, the legal tax revolt, and other safe acts of civil disobedience shifts the subject’s thinking, so they can more easily accept larger displays of defiance of the narrative. It also allows people to vent frustration in a non-violent way, defusing some of the psychological pressure that long term exposure to major projects creates.

The current defiance meme, #The Chalkening, is one that as many people as possible should further and participate in, for the reasons above. And the meme shouldn’t be limited to pro-Trump memes, Anti-Cruz memes/anti-Hillary memes are excellent additions to this display.

The Next part discusses the Tabula Rasa Segment

Public Perception, Reality, and Narratives: Elegant Segments

In part 3 of this series, we laid out the basic checklist used to design and test the segments of a project. Once the individual segments have been tested, the project design team will construct as elegant a model of the system as possible. Elegance, in this case is a scientific/mathematical principle–it means for those who may not use the term in this context, the simplest path from point A to point B.

Elegance is a necessary attribute in any project dealing with more than a handful of known people, or any project that has an extended time frame, unless you have nearly unlimited resources. There are a few reasons for this:

• An elegant solution involves the least amount of tweaking, and provides the widest range of acceptable outcomes. it’s a nearly one size fits all model.
• When unexpected events impact the project, or unexpected variables appear, they are quickly spotted and can be dealt with before they become a big problem. When you’re working in a technologically advanced society where information propagation is orders of magnitude faster than word of mouth, a small issue can become a project wrecking problem in a matter of days or even hours.
• An elegant solution also has few or no viable counter solutions. If you’ve seen the Karate Kid, you might remember the “Crane” move–it had no defense, no counter.

How elegant a project has to be is dependent on a large number of variables. For instance, if you’re running a psy-op in a primitive country, in a hostile situation, you won’t be focusing on elegance, you’ll be working for brute force and heavy impact.

If you’re running a longer term project in an advanced society that has a specific goal, and you don’t particularly care what happens on the way to that goal (or you have high resource limits), elegance becomes something of an issue, but typically only from the perspective of carefully designed segments that are meant to serve as inflection points, stressors, or analysis triggers.

The Effective Use of Elegant Segments

On a long term project, there will be times when you want to set off a specific event, or a series of events, or use an event to test how the project is proceeding. In these cases, you use the most elegant segment you have on hand. So if you wanted to test the resistance factor to militarized police, for instance, you would introduce a narrative through mainstream media, where cases that involved militarized police would be sensationalized or kept in the news cycle longer than they would have been in the past. You would them monitor social media for public reaction, along with the news, to see what (if anything) people would do.

Or if a part of your project was to effectively label a particular segment of the population in a particular way–for example, the “domestic terrorist” narrative, then when specific news stories surfaced that involved specific elements, you would use those to further your narrative, and analyse the public perception.

Enter The Western “Land Grab”/Domestic Terrorist Narrative

This narrative is a good example of an elegant segment, for quite a few reasons:

• It involves issues that only impact a a very small part of the population–people who lease land from the government. This gives you a very large pool of uninformed/disinterested observers to study, and involves minimal active players.
• The government has spent decades implanting a very specific perception of BLM land, and leases, into the national perception; that these are public lands that belong to all, that the government manages for the benefit of the people. And the government leases these lands at rock bottom prices as well, to benefit lease holders, specifically–this created over time a visceral, subconscious resentment of those who lease the land. Ask the next 10,000 people you meet “what do you think of people who lease BLM land, like ranchers and logging companies?”
• The government has also suppressed information regarding how those lands were acquired by BLM in the first place, and the fact that the government  is not authorized to hold those lands to begin with.
• The government and the media have also furthered the narrative for years that those who lease such land are, for the most part, people who try to cheat on their leases. This has been done by making sure the public remains ignorant of how the leasing system works, and how many conflicting regulations are in place that can’t be met without violating others.
• The public in general has little to no understanding of the details of land leases from the government, or the Homestead Act, or grandfather clauses. Frankly, land deals just aren’t interesting news–until a standoff happens. And because so little is brought to the public’s attention, the media is able to leave out a lot of pertinent facts that would impact the desired narrative.
• The government also chooses its “victims” carefully. If you think they don’t have a good idea which lease holders are most likely to further the “domestic terrorist” narrative–THINK AGAIN. Just as the IRS chooses the people they will lean on carefully, using the services of the home team, Booz Allen.

Enter The Elegant Segment…

When the project designers need to check on the progress of a particular narrative and project, whatever that project may be, they throw in this all purpose segment. In the case of the “Land Grab”, the government had been involved in adversarial conflicts with families in two states that fit the profile of subjects who were likely to react in a manner that would satisfy the project outcomes, and provide a very good measurement of a wide range of public perception points.

In other words, these people were a good fit for the “domestic terrorist” perception model the government had been creating as part of other ongoing projects. So, the government plugged in the elegant segment, and dropped the regulatory hammer on the first case.

Then, the project team analysed the results (and is still monitoring the persistence of the first test trigger, BTW). And not too long after, encouraged by the results of trigger one, they dropped another hammer, a trigger two, on a second family in a second state, and analysed the results.

The Results…

Because this was a quite elegant segment, the optimal counters to it were limited, but there were still at minimum 24 counters that would have at least diffused the narrative and a handful of those would have caused significant issues for the design team and the project.

Sadly, because the people involved were not familiar with how mass perception management works or were too emotionally involved to care, both triggers were highly successful from the project point of view, when they could have seriously damaged the project instead. In both of these cases, had someone with experience in the field been on hand, and the people involved had been willing to follow counter project guidelines, there would have been a serious interruption in the ongoing project.

In the next part, we’ll look at some common elegant segments and their uses

Public Perception, Reality, And Narrative Part 3

In the last post, we showed a very simple project, that was designed to gauge employee attitudes towards a rule change in a work environment and also target potential thieves. A lot can be done with a single symbol, even in a simple project.

Constructing A Project 101:

In the field of mass perception management, projects are constructed with the specific goal of bringing about a particular perception of a group or event, within a given perspective. as an example of a complex project, let’s look at how to create a race war in your spare time for fun and profit.

• Define the PERSPECTIVE SET. A given project might address anywhere from one to several perspectives, though the total number of perspectives should ideally be limited to 3; the two subject groups involved, and a disinterested observer. In the case of America, lets take one of the two major projects right now–BLM/White Privilege.
• Define the PERCEPTION GOALS. You have decided on the perspectives you wish to change or manipulate, so now the question becomes defining what internal perceptions you want to create in the subjects. In the case of BLM/White Privilege, you want to create a pervasive resentment/ oppression in both subject sets, as well as the perception in each case that the “other guys” are: protected/privileged/manipulative/controlling/exploitative/dangerous/ a threat to a highly personal belief. The objective/ endgame is to create first isolated uprisings, then an eventual widespread conflict.
• Examine the DISINTERESTED OBSERVER/NON-PARTICIPANT VIEW. In this case, the disinterested observer/non-participant would be framed as How does the rest of the world view the issue? In the context of the BLM/White Privilege project, it might surprise you to know this perspective was left “open”, in that there is nothing in the project construction to push either side of the project. Why is this the case? Because there are other project ongoing elsewhere, and by leaving this perspective open, the other projects can leverage these projects to further their own narrative. This is the most mathematically elegant way to handle a large scale project, and one of the reasons that conflicts on one area of the world can propagate so rapidly in others for no apparent reason. There’s that word, propagate…Arab Spring, anyone?
• Model Design Phase 1 Begins: Once you have decided on the project parameters above, you get to the fun part. Teams of people with strong backgrounds in semiotics, symbology, memeology, and/or contextual framing begin combing through the immense databases and data point sets owned by the project designers, searching this data using a wide variety of classification codes and filters. Once they have a large enough data base for segment design to begin, the information is passed on to segment design teams.
• Segment design teams then meet either in person or virtually, and use the design and outcome parameters to construct the full basic model framework, as an equation, and determine using  complicated software, Mighty Magic 8 Balls and fortunes from fortune cookies to find the smallest number of segments that will produce the widest number of combinations with the same outcome range.
• Segment designers grab a pile of segments, and begin designing them.Some of these designers will only be working with text–creating social media posts, for example. Some design memes, others write the clickbait headlines, some produce the You Tube videos. The vast majority of segment designers work alone or with only one or two other people, and frequently have no idea if their work is going to be used at all, or what the end project is. And in many cases, a segment might seem to be entirely unrelated to the main project–a meme featuring a Trumpcat, for example, could be used in the BLM/White Privilege project easily (they have been), but the memer doesn’t know that. They only know they’re getting paid to make memes on different people or objects.
• The Isolated Segment Testing Phase: In this phase, the individual segments of the model are carefully tested on a small scale, to observe any visible impact on the subject group.

As an example, a segment design team might take a story about a crime that was in the news in East Podunk, that was basically a non-issue; when you remove the contextual framing that is inherent in any event, the facts show that what happened is absolutely expected.

The Segment Test  Model: Car stalls out on train tracks. Silly driver panics and is so concerned about saving their property they stay in the car. Train splats car and driver. End of story. Before the advent of wide scale mass perception management, a story like this would literally be a small paragraph buried in the Podunk Picayune, and the locals would have said “well, that’s what thought gets you…” if the incident happened at all.

And if you read historic newspapers, you discover these deaths were almost unheard of, because people abandoned the car and saved their lives. When they did occur, they were big news.

However, lets say that in East Podunk, this has happened more than once at this crossing, because there is no crossing signal (and citizens in East Podunk have skewed priorities, created by cultural conditioning). Add in the natural desire of the community to prevent more people from being splatted by trains. Now add the state’s desire to get more federal funding, and that it’s an election year for an unpopular state Senator. The result is a news story that could be presented in a contextual framework like this:

“Amy FluffBunny here, reporting live from the Podunk Avenue rail crossing, where once again an innocent life was lost today…..yack yack human interest trigger: Candy Pureheart, young mother and beloved kindergarten teacher‘s car stalled while crossing the tracks, and she was unable to start her vehicle again before the approaching train hit her. She leaves behind three year old twins….

yack yack, statistics of other fatalities, insert grieving husband human interest trigger and call to action: We’re now at the home of Candy and Pierce Pureheart, where family and friends have gathered to offer emotional support to the grieving husband and father. Pierce, I’m sure I speak for all our viewers when I say my heart goes out to you tonight.

Thank you, Amy. This is such a terrible blow to our family…

Pierce, as you know, Candy’s tragic death is the latest in a long stream of deaths at the Podunk Avenue crossing. How does that make you feel?

Amy, before this happened to me, I was already trying to get a crossing signal installed there. I even spoke to the Podunk Board about it, and nobody listened. Now, I just want to tear this crazy system down. Too many people have died….

And there you have it, citizens of Podunk. Too many people have died, and the Podunk Board is silent.

Yack yack, story repeated every hour on the local feed of the most popular fair and balanced cable news network around, and discussed on talk radio. Yack Yack UPDATE:

This is Amy FluffBunny, reporting live from the state capitol where angry citizens are confronting a beleaguered state legislature regarding the tragic death of Candy Pureheart last week in East Podunk. I’m here with Jake Snakely the state Transportation director, to get his side of the story. Mr. Snakely, can you explain to our viewers why there is no crossing signal in East Podunk, despite the long string of tragic deaths ?

Well Amy, that is an excellent question. First i’d like to extend my condolences to Ms. Pureheart’s friends, coworkers and family in their time of grief. As the Director of Transportation, I feel a personal responsibility to all of the victims of senseless tragedies like this…yack, yack, 1 minute 30 second more of political talking points (It’s his election year as well). I would love to put a signal there, Amy.

However, the railroad crossing is under the federal jurisdiction, so my hands are tied. I have once again sent a letter to the federal DOT requesting action on this dangerous crossing, and I would also like to see our Senator personally use his influence to get action on this issue…yack, yack, (Transportation Director throws Senator under the political bus)….And Amy, the Governor has also asked our Senator to determine (doubling down on throwing Senator under the political bus) whether or not our request for more federal funding for road upkeep and a crossing signal, and the permits to install one, ( the Senator being told how much pork is expected to save his job) is being acted on…yack, yack…

The Segment Test Begins:

At this point, the story would be given a “click bait” headline on news sites–City officials silent in the face of tragic death…And one designed for Facebook– OMG, look what happened to this mother of twins (graphic content)…And for Twitter– WHERE ARE THE AUTHORITIES? CORRUPTION–R/T . Several different versions of the story from different news outlets would be posted on social media, from as wide a range of news sources as possible, and ideally would include at least one AP direct story (closet thing to just the facts) one left leaning, one right leaning, and one conspiracy/apocryphal site, each with different click bait headlines.

• Monitoring teams then run semantic analysis on all of the comments in the various places this story surfaces, propagation analysis tracks how far and fast the story spreads, perception specialists monitor the change of headlines as subjects insert their own headlines on Facebook posts, and content/context analysts measure how fast the facts become distorted, while the perception specialists use predictive models to try and guess what facts will be distorted, and how.

In  this case, because the segment test is for a particular project, social media perception manipulators (TROLLS/paid posters) would insert carefully worded comments everywhere the story appeared, based on verifiable/ cited facts. For instance — “Well, railroad crossing signals were supposed to be part of OBUMMER’S SHOVEL READY JOBS…”. Or, “If the Podunk Avenue crossing was in the “right part of town”, there would have been a signal already. RIP Candy, prayers for the family..”

If the segment in question was a targeted segment for one side of the main project or the other, the actual news event would be chosen to reflect that, as would the semantic content and weighting of the comments seeded into the narrative on social media and news sites. This is where the TROLLS come into play, as opposed to paid posters. We’ll get into the main  differences in a later topic.

• Segment testing ends and the results are analysed, coded, and verified. In a typical segment test, the tracking begins as soon as the data is seeded, and ends when there has been 48 hours of activity below the set “floor” for the segment. As an example, a segment that the designers are hoping will go viral might specify a “floor” of less than 5000 interactions in 12 hours. So when the segment goes below that floor, monitoring will continue until there has been no significant engagement for 48 hours, but the data set that will be analysed immediately will only cover the time it took for the story to begin propagating to the time it hit the floor.
• The Segment Team Cost/Return Analysis Phase.The math geeks have equations that can determine from the initial size of the seed and the time it takes to hit the floor whether or not this story can be used in a model requiring a viral result, and if it can, how big the seed should be and how much it will cost to use this segment for that purpose. They can also game, using proven algorithms, whether organic propagation will work, and the time frame. They can determine whether the segment has a persistence value–meaning it’s one of those stories people will use later, even years later, in the context of a debate or argument. And whether that segment has contextual value–how useful would it be as a clip in another news story later, in places other than East Podunk?
• Final Segment Analysis. The results of the above process are sent to/given to the project team leads. 

And even if the segment is considered not useful in this project–it’s still kept if it offers a unique equation, because you never throw away jig saw puzzle pieces. They may not fit this puzzle, but that doesn’t mean they won’t fit a future puzzle.

An interesting tidbit: some people really DO use Mighty Magic 8 Balls, fortunes from fortune cookies, the totals from fast food receipts, or other random variables to introduce organic chance components into a segment.

Next up: The Value of The Tabula Rasa Project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Perception, Reality, and Narratives Part 2.

 

Part 1: Perception, Reality And Narratives

In the first lesson on Symbology and Semantic analysis, we looked at the opening minute of one of the last  pure “propaganda”  films produced by the government. Before we move on, consider what I just wrote.

Do words like “propaganda” make you uncomfortable?

Why? Because this is a weighted word. We have been taught that “propaganda” has a negative connotation. Here in America, the contextual frame for that word includes “communist”, “dictators”, “false”, “oppression”, and more.

But take a look at the ORIGINAL DEFINITION, ACCORDING TO OXFORD. It comes from the Latin, and simply means propagation/propagate in the verb form. You might chuckle when you see the original common usage :-).

To Spread Or Disseminate. To Breed. To Transmit Through a Medium. And in this case, the word is in quotations to inform you that it is a weighted term being used as a descriptor–so should either be taken in its original meaning (typically from the Latin), or disregarded when analyzing. *Observation*, must come from as neutral a perspective as possible. Just as any scientist must view their experiment objectively, and not allow their personal bias to color the interpretation of the result, someone analyzing a project must do the same.

But on to this first look at how powerful contextual framing can be. Here is a picture, Image courtesy of Goldy at FreeDigitalPhotos.net:

The only context we have is a raised right index finger, apparently male, light blue button down shirt, black background. If you asked 1000 random people to write a caption for this picture, you could, conceivably, end up with 1000 entirely different perspectives, and hundreds of different perception frames.

A *Perspective* would be what the picture means. What is this saying?  A Perception frame gives you clues as to how the subject internalized it. How did the subject “own” this? What does it say about their psychological viewpoint? So in this case, one person might caption this:

“Hey! Coffee Lady! The Usual!”  This gives us a Perspective of ordering something or asking, a “signal”. It gives us little Perception about the subject, other than the fact they are a probable coffee drinker and a creature of habit.

IF we include the finger as a quantity, we can also assume that this subject has in the past ordered “the usual” for more than one person–though this probability would be regarded as highly questionable, unless we had other information on the subject to support it.

Another Caption might be ” Teacher, I really need to gooo…” This gives us a Perspective of a notification coupled to a fairly urgent request–that is passive/agressive. The Perception in this case is very interesting. This person would likely be a male subordinate, in a highly controlled environment, that is expressing a level of irritation/resentment and likely feels unappreciated, if they are an American.

This particular perception is based on the standard cultural profile for America, as in most adult  work environments where a shirt like this would be worn, the subject would just get up and quietly leave without asking permission. Even in highly regulated work environments like call centers, you wouldn’t see this type of rigidity when informing a floor manager, for instance, that you needed to get up. You wouldn’t typically see a caption using this “childish” semantic structure, either.

Given the choice of words,  we have to take the infamous finger into account, also.

The finger, when coupled with the deliberate language choice, shows the subject is  expressing his resentment in a passive/aggressive fashion, as in elementary schools in certain regions of the country some decades ago, the student would signal the need to go to the bathroom by holding up either a #1, or a #2, so the teacher would know how long they would be gone.

If we were deconstructing a group of captions submitted by a large company for analysis, and had been asked to scale the captions to find potential thieves or saboteurs, this subject would get tagged.

He is probably a cubicle inhabitant who is feeling  resentful. He/she (though the odds this is a woman are quite small, as women don’t typically express their resentment in “potty terms”) has probably been written up more than once for things that are against policy that they consider to be “stupid”. The odds are high this subject’s write-ups were break related, and the latest one would have warned of possible suspension or other wage related punitive measures.

And yep–this is the guy who stole the stapler ;-).

Context is everything. A context free picture for captioning would be the simple outline of the hand in this picture, on a white background. This would allow for the best analysis of the captions, as the subject would be providing ALL of the context. This particular project was aimed at a particular subject group–employees in a service business.

The Back Story Behind This Example…

Some time ago in a telephone survey company in middle America, HR felt that too many employees were just logging off their phones to take bathroom breaks, and decided  to require employees to raise their hand when they needed a 3 minute break. They assumed this would cut down on people taking unnecessary breaks, as the employee would be publicly telling everyone they had to go to the bathroom. The time they chose was based on the size of the call center floor, locations of restrooms, and the average time employees were logging off. They were also experiencing an uptick in petty theft of supplies.

So, they ordered a project that would do two things–get the employees’ perceptions of the new rule, and also reveal the likely supply thieves. They then posted the project in the break rooms, in the company newsletter, and on their internal email/social network system, in the form of a “fun contest”, with minor prizes to be awarded for the “best” captions.

The context of the project was designed to encourage maximum engagement from the employees, but beyond that, the number of captions submitted by each employee can be used as an indicator of employee dissatisfaction. A happy, engaged employee might submit more than one caption, but when all the captions that employee submits are considered as a group, we can determine they are just an enthusiastic team player. And UNHAPPY employee on the other hand, might also submit more than one caption–but they would as a group show the employee was unhappy.

The resulting analysis indicated that they had far more disgruntled employees than they thought, that the new rule was actually causing a measurable backlash effect that increased the loss of work time to bathroom breaks, and correctly identified over a dozen thieves.

They ditched the rule–and the thieves.

Next, We’ll look at how the objective of a project determines the level of context and type of context included, and the importance of framing a project that allows for high internalization when dealing with mass perception management.

 

PART THREE–

 

Cruz, The GOPer Choice, Part 1

We’ve been watching Ted Cruz, the banker’s husband, carefully for a while of course. Even before he decided on his run for the presidency, he was obviously setting up for something. There is plenty of evidence t look at in his actions in the past that proves he is far from an “outsider”. On the contrary, old Cruz is as GOPer as you can get.

And now that Wisconsin is passed, and the odds of Cruz getting enough delegates going forward to be an actual viable candidate are somewhere between nearly zero and forget about it, people are wondering why he doesn’t drop out. That is a simply one to answer–math. The goal at the moment isn’t for Cruz to get 1237, it’s to make sure Trump gets 1236 or less.

The GOPer Last Ditch Effort.

At the moment, it looks like old Cruz has likely agreed behind closed doors somewhere to take Kasich as a running mate if absolutely necessary, since Kasich’s delegates from Ohio would follow him. If the convention is brokered and the GOPers scrap Rule 40, as they have threatened to do, then after the binding votes were done, Kaisch could safely withdraw and his delegates would go Cruz. The GOPers have likely also made arrangements for Cruz to get Rubio’s delegates also, to make the Cruz ticket appear to the uninformed to be a “mandate”.

The GOPers also have the MSM running a full on frontal assault on the people, pushing the dual narrative of Trump can’t make 1237+, and Trump’s delegates have already been stolen and are not bound to him. This is, of course, a flat out lie by commission AND omission. But that doesn’t faze the MSM a bit, of course. To complicate the issue, Roger Stone has either been co-opted or has become an utter idiot, and with the help of Alex Jones is trying to incite a “March on Cleveland” and “Days of Rage” that is exactly what the GOPers, AND the administration want, albeit for different reasons.

Good grief, he named it after the Weatherman Riots back in 1969. How obvious can you get? Then he puts in lame disclaimers here and there about the Trump team not advocating violence…And as I pointed out in another article, if you think the GOP wouldn’t use Stone’s association with Trump as an excuse to disqualify him at the convention if this happens, THINK AGAIN. And Stone himself has laid the groundwork for that by saying he still talks to Trump regularly and they “have a rhythm”.

People Have Short Memories.

Remember, Roger Stone is a long time GOPer operative, who has his fair share of political skeletons in the closet, though not nearly as bad as some campaign managers, of course. He’s also known to be the kind of guy who doesn’t hesitate to bite someone who is no longer on his “good” side.

Alex Jones, IN THE PAST, would have taken a look at this campaign and the blatant mass perception manipulation, talk of stolen delegates, the RNC putting up a website explaining brokered conventions, STONE calling for a huge demonstration in an area under secret service protection where the entire section of the state will be saturated with LEOs with full riot gear, MRAPS, and National Guard on standby and screamed “PSY-OP!! FALSE FLAG!! OBAMA WANTS MARTIAL LAW AND TO SUSPEND ELECTIONS!”

Especially since he knows all the players in this game–the government, the RNC, Cambridge Analytica, and even poor Booz Allen Hamilton. He is the one that consistently exposed  Psy-ops over the years. But the number of voices out there saying Alex Jones is part of the problem is growing.  Now, all of a sudden, he is all in favor of running straight into the most obvious psy-op of the decade. He knows the media is lying. He knows the players. He KNOWS about the ongoing project, and has exposed parts of it in the past. To say with all that in mind that he doesn’t KNOW this “Days of Rage”lunacy fits right into the project is entirely illogical.

Stone’s talk of “reverse Alinsky” makes ZERO sense. And I do believe there are a few LAWS around that deal with people who threaten, harass, suborn, or otherwise try to intimidate Delegates as well….Whether they are merely useful tools in the game, or full operatives, is an unknown. But the number one rule in THIS game is you always assume there are no useful idiots or tools. Leaving a margin of error is crucial, especially when you are dealing with large scale crowd scenarios in a fully primed context.

Very strange–but wait, Alex and Stone are on our side! Yep–and these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. You can go about your business. Move along…..

How To Get World Class Psy Ops At Yard Sale Prices

A while back, in the series of posts about Cambridge Analytica, I pointed out that Cruz the banker’s husband was apparently, judging from FEC filings and the budget he started with from Hedge Fund guru and elite tax dodger Robert Mercer, getting the best psy-op firm in the world at yard sale prices. So now, I’ll explain a little more about the single most valuable commodity in the world–data.

Data Is The Single Most Valuable Commodity In The World.

Yes, that’s true. Now the nay-sayers will be saying “well, my Burger King receipt is data, what will you give me for it”? Well, for just your BK receipt, that depends. With an app like Receipt Hog, a few points.  And when you have enough points, you can get cash! Receipt Hog is just one of hundreds of Reward programs that pay consumers every day. From grocery stores and drug stores, to the wildly popular WalMart app with the “savings catcher” that rewards you with egift cards if, when you use it, it finds a lower price on an item you bought at WalMart somewhere else in your area, reward programs can keep a steady flow of cash, gift cards, free samples, gas discounts and more streaming into your mailbox, email, and Paypal.

Even Bing is in on the game, and rapidly seizing market share from Google, because they pay you for your activity. Simply for allowing various companies to collect data on you, you can get anywhere from 10-100.00 or more a month between all the programs.

And every one of these programs gets a huge return on their investment in you. WalMart and your local grocery store, for instance, use this information with other data to determine display prices, to track performance of sales cycles for maximum profit, and to provide research firms with aggregate shopping data for overall consumer spending trends.

Bing uses the data to target sponsored ads, and also improve their search engine’s functionality. Google does the same with your data, but they don’t pay you for it. Receipt Hog keeps the raw data in anonymous aggregate form, and sells it to market tracking firms and also provides it to the companies that pay a fee to be included in their reward program.

But There Is More To Data Than Meets The Eye…

For every company that offers you rewards for your data, there are literally several hundred to 1000 or more that simply use it for free. Some of them don’t even bother telling you explicitly that they’re collecting it. For every site that gives you a nice large “cookie” warning, there are thousands that don’t (but use cookies and dozens of other tools to track you through their site’s “analytics”). And while some of these sites do nothing sinister with your data, others may sell your data to people with less than innocent motives.

Take the Cruz app for iPhones–it’s a GAME! How Neat! In exchange for answering questions about yourself, talking to friends, playing games etc., you get points. Talk enough of your unsuspecting friends into downloading the spy app from Hades, and you win a super Duper Cyber Trophy! Meanwhile–your Facebook friends (Cruzers or not) start seeing all Cruz, all the time.

But more sinister–they start seeing different “regular ads” and “sponsored sites” than before. And some people have gotten email from the Cruz Crew, Facebook posts from the Cruz Crew, etc. This lovely tool will even (if you let them track you) let you know, wherever you are, when another Cruz Crew member is nearby, so you can meet them! To date, over 100,000 people have downloaded and installed this app, and a good percentage of them allowed the geo tracking option. I have to wonder about anyone who has no problem with ANY agency tracking where they are at all times to within 50 yards, personally.

Why? because that type of data, my friend, is the most valuable type, to certain people. Data that tracks human traffic flow is used for everything from deciding on delay times on traffic signals to determining the square foot lease price of retail space, by “innocent” businesses and municipal, state and federal governments. But it’s also used by people plotting lone wolf terror attacks. Just as it can be used to trace someone who has been kidnapped, this data also tells a kidnapper with a specific target where that target is.

Wait A Minute…Why Would I Be Getting Different Ads?

Well, about those yard sale rates we mentioned at the beginning of this article…

Cruz made a deal. A very interesting deal, where he gets discount rates for allowing Cambridge to copy all of his data from the app, and website, and anywhere else, for their two brand new U.S. storage hubs–one located, coincidentally, not far from D.C., and one in Texas. So while you’re playing games and answering seemingly innocuous questions, Cambridge is busily copying all that information, and more. If you read the terms (and most people don’t) you’ll find that by choosing to take certain options and agree to certaibn things, you’re also giving them far more access to anyone on your FB friends list–and your smartphone contact list–than you should be able to give.

Remember, this is the company that has fought off more than one ethics charge for flat out appropriating data, and for using misleading “polls” with 1.00 rewards to appropriate MORE data, from Facebook and who knows where else. So while you earn your virtual titles and virtual prizes and trophies, you’re giving these yo-yo’s access to everyone you know on any of your lists in your social media or your phone.

And about those “different ads”–well, Cambridge does still do some work with people other than politicians, so in most cases, you’re just receiving a copy of an ad better targeted for your demographic code. Which may cause you to spend more than usual shopping online.

But– that data also allows paid trolls and “social media/social perception managers” to begin posting to you, to pick up more intel on you as a person. And it also allows any firm currently running a large scale mass perception project to target you. Cambridge also sells data, to other firms like it that do strictly commercial PS, which is, I suppose, OK for some people.

Wow. So Much For Facebook! Well, It’s Just Marketing Information….

But it isn’t. Even when you don’t give them reasons for blocking ads, when you don’t file complaints, just your likes tell them a lot about you. And  semantic analysis is also in there. Even when you personally don’t comment, your like gives you away. When you DO comment, your choice of words speaks volumes. Semantic analysis provides an entirely different level of sophistication when it comes to categorizing “you”. OK, so maybe Facebook itself doesn’t use semantic analysis and semantic weighting and scaling (though they might, for all we know). But they still collect that data and sell it to others.

How do you feel about Cambridge’s parent company, SCL Group, getting  that data? How do you feel when you think about what “mass perception management” really means? If you don’t know what it means–in a nutshell, it’s psy-ops. but it takes the form of weeks, months, or years of slowly changing your opinion on an issue, or a demographic group, or a religion, or religion in general.

It can be something as simple as showing you nothing but positive Facebook sponsored ads about Islam, or nothing but refugee articles about sick children and exploited women (while the majority of the unvetted refugees coming into America from the middle East are young, healthy, men), to a years long, highly sophisticated project designed to convince you through changing the meaning of words and the contextual framing of real world events that there really is an epidemic of mass shootings, or cops murdering innocent people.

It can also be used by media people or alternative media that you trust, to feed you deliberate misinformation/disinformation…like long trusted talk show hosts trying to convince you to believe them, not your gut or your lyin’ eyes. Or people who are noted authority figures on gov’t psy-ops and false flags suddenly telling you to do things that have zero benefit for you or the country, but would give the gov’t they claim is out to get you and destroy America the weapons it needs to do so….

Knowledge is power. And right now, a lot of people are using the most valuable commodity of all, your data, against you. You can’t effectively stop them from getting that data. But you can learn to observe instead of watch. whether it’s a news program or a written blog page, you need to learn to observe the language, without emotion interfering. Language isn’t just words, it’s pictures, video, audio, and “optics”.  So, in future posts, we’ll be looking at how to deconstruct what you watch, and point you to tools and ways you can learn to observe. Those tools and materials are out there, and everyone needs to make use of them.