I get misty when I read the words a gentleman from the UK wrote when he signed my @MoveOn petition to investigate Trump’s digital campaign “Project Alamo” and Cambridge Analytica nearly three and a half years ago.
His words so powerful, fueled by what he was witnessing at home.
His words are prescient and haunting:
“This is about transparency in democracy, political integrity and the future direction of our world and society...
“A political electoral system that is maintained by lies and misinformation to retain power without having the courage to stand up to scrutiny regarding it's claims is an abhorrence which must be nipped in the bud...”
“You have here an opportunity to make a stand for ethics and a set of values in defence of a non totalitarian or repressive regime...”
“You have this power at this juncture. Please use it wisely as eventually your decision will be judged by history as long as we are still permitted to think for ourselves.”-@JonathanBuckn13 May 13, 2017
He told me that his country was under siege by the mind virus as well.
He told me about the work of @carolecadwalla and I learned that Cambridge Analytica was using weapon’s grade cyberterrorism globally.
Parallels between Russian military and American oligarch-funded cyberterrorism came into sharp focus.
I was inspired to write the petition in the spring of 2017, after diffusing a tense situation in a parking lot between an elderly man and a woman who stole a spot he’d been waiting on. I told him to let it go. It wasn’t worth it. I’d been doing a lot of that post-election.
He was in his 90s and told me all about wars he’d lived through and summarized the presidents of each decade. He looked at me before driving off and said: “We’ve never been here before. This is a different kind of war. These are different kinds of bombs.” I knew what he meant.
The next morning in my inbox I received an invitation from @MoveOn to write my own petition and so I did. I sat on my balcony at dawn and typed some words on my phone, demanding to see all the Project Alamo and Cambridge Analytica ads. I wrote it like a Mark Twain manifesto.
Seems like a lifetime ago. The petition was signed by 100s of people all over the world, demanding to see every dark ad microtargeted by the Trump campaign to voters in swing states to persuade and suppress. Here’s one of the original petition tweets:
MY PETITION: “Cyber Mind Crimes are War Crimes, we've never experienced Big Data enabling corruption of this magnitude. It's the first time a cyber misinformation war was waged on American soil, affecting the outcome of a presidency, and all part of a much larger con.”-me, 4/2017
MY PETITION: “Let's force these clandestine operators out of their bunker$ and into the interrogation light, because it's time for citizens to see how their minds were twisted away from the truth by a gaslighting regime that only knows one racket: money.”-me, 4/2017
When @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris peacefully transition to power on January 20, Trump will remain the real fake president* on Fox and in various private groups on Facebook, his and their relevancy blowing in the wind.
“Shambling mass of lies and deranged conspiracy theories.”-@MattGertz
MY PRESIDENT💜—Josesh Biden, eager to elevate climate change issues throughout his administration, is drafting orders to reduce planet-warming pollution and seeking nominees who will embed climate policy in environmental agencies and other depts.”-@nytimes nytimes.com/2020/11/17/cli…
Together @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris can work on key issues—like saving our planet and creating a sustainable world for all living things.
FEAR PEDDLERS: “If you’re wondering why British political discourse began to degrade, look no further than the arrival of American right-wing conservatism via both the funding of activists and new media outlets which propagated their message.”-@peterjukes bylinetimes.com/2020/11/17/cit…
BANNON🤡+MERCER🧟:
“UK’s culture wars were triggered by a US Supreme Court ruling over free speech. Free speech was the wedge by which formerly marginal expressions of xenophobic nationalism, racism, and Islamophobia could become central in Britain’s public debate.”-@peterjukes
CAMBRIDGE DATA CRIMES: “It didn’t matter if many voices expressing these opinions online were paid for by multiple accounts, boosted by dark digital analytics, or indeed often outright replicants run by troll farms hosted and funded by hostile foreign countries.”-@peterjukes
Raging against the Twitter machine for the past four years—pushing truth in a time of mass deception, smoking out those perpetuating crimes against humanity—it doesn’t end here.
We’re going to need a social movement combined with the power of the military to beat back the evil.
Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are already beating disinformation. Government programs and well-educated citizens give each a fighting chance.