Yes, I took Putin's roubles to undermine Western democracy. This is my story

Every man must make a reckoning, and now I must make mine. มาลัย (which means 'Garland of Flowers' in Thai), please note the following. Dear reader / next of kin: You will have read much this week about the many ways Putin used digital networks to influence and undermine Western European democracies, including the United …

[YetAnotherLocksmith]

I don't get it?

Can anybody explain this "article"?

[Voland's right hand]

Re: I don't get it?

You must be new here.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Can anybody explain this "article"?

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I don't get it?

generally, it's a canary. When it sings, you get the proof the world's still around, i.e. nothing more important (read: bloody and / or bloody stupid) worth sharing has happened in the last 24 hou

[Alister]

Re: I don't get it?

Can anybody explain this "article"?

Google the word "satire"

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I don't get it?

Google the word "satire"

Spoilsport.

[Chemical Bob]

Re: I don't get it?

Why would anyone Google the word "spoilsport"?

[PM from Hell]

Re: I don't get it?

Shurely you mean the word Saltire

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I don't get it?

It's a neoclassical take on a post modernist viewpoint. A written visual representation of the selected subject matter.

Hope that clears it up.

[AndersBreiner]

Re: I don't get it?

I bet you *claim* not to get it. Typical Spetsgruppa "V" Vimpel Information Warfare tactic. Go back to Moscow, Ivan! We're on to you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Superb, my tiny mind really really can't get it's head round "the virtuous circle of mindful evidence", no matter how hard I try to imagine a meeting with someone explaining it my mind just screams "bollocks, no sense, stop now" at me.

[Aladdin Sane]

It's like the conjoined triangles of success.

[Rich 11]

It's like the conjoined triangles of success.

Weren't they meant to be separated at birth?

[vir]

I stopped at "thinkfluence". What an load of self-serving masturbatory nonsense.

[Flywheel]

Y'know, in the this era in which Fake News is the New Truth (Pravda?), I can't decide whether Lord Bong's article is true or not. When I receive clarification from DPNK I'll post an update.

[Teiwaz]

Where is Susannah York?

Ludicrous...

But strangely believable.

Makes me feel either the entire world is mad or I've been on drugs since the mid-90's.

[Mage]

Re: been on drugs since the mid-90's

That's what they want you to believe. Actually it all went pear shaped in the 1960s.

I feel I fell down the wrong trouser leg of time during the UWC strike in 1974. It "won" due to mass intimidation and no electricity. People in the Belfast Shipyard (a Loyalist hotbed) ignored it till the word went round that the cars in the car parks would be set on fire. The second one was bad too, but collapsed because the people and the government decided to oppose it.

[jake]

Re: been on drugs since the mid-90's

1960s? Try the late 19teens, and the first "Red" scare ... at least here in the US.

Some would argue it goes back further than that, but I could make a case for that bring the first "modern" use of mass psychological manipulation on a large population.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 1960s? Try the late 19teens, ...

Some years ago I read quite an interesting book on propaganda and insurgency written by some military officer who, amongst other things, served during the Malayan Emergency. He placed quite a lot of emphasis on pre-WWII Germany, because of the simultaneous presence of competing and well organised left-wing /and/ right-wing radical/activist organisations.

[Tom Paine]

Re: 1960s? Try the late 19teens, ...

This is an excellent programme, tracing the history of disinformation back to the Okrana forging the "Protocols of the Elders of ZIon". Highly recommended.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vx0db

[Denarius]

Re: been on drugs since the mid-90's

Jake, define values for large. Mass spreading of delusions goes back a long way. Electronics has just sped up the speed of lies. Lets see, have a browse of Suetonius for myths about Jewish worship. Josephus has some horror stories about group beliefs held against reason and rational self interest. Later various authors record assorted mad monks thru post Roman Mediteranean areas followed by witchhunt madness and insane beliefs in experts and kings. All of these were about gaining power, mostly by creating a "problem", generating fear or worse, snobbery about secret knowledge, then offering a "fix" for the self generated problem while avoiding real problems. The 19th and 20th centuries only seem different because mechanisation has allowed damaged areas to be larger.

In short, old process but due the loss of history in the common cultural consciousness, old tricks by the power hungry can get used as if they are new.

[jake]

Re: been on drugs since the mid-90's

Thus my use of the word "modern". In quotes, even, indicating an elusive target.

[el kabong]

Re: Where is Susannah York?

Yes, believable. And accurate too!

[Alistair]

Re: Where is Susannah York?

@ Telwaz:

Both.

[frank ly]

re. Putin's roubles

He always pays me with Bitcoins. You have to ask for them.

[x 7]

Was this confession really written by Allan Sugarloaf or Martha Lane Fox-Knightly?

[phuzz]

That's the wrong question, the right question is: should they have?

[el kabong]

Is anyone surprised? I read a fair share of the articles this piece links to as they were being published and I remember wondering at the time if people were really that stupid for taking all that crap in or if they were just pretending to be stupid only to fool me. Well, they were not trying to fool me, sadly. I wish they were.

[jake]

After taking the temporary ...

... Borzoi out to do his late-night business in what passes for a deluge here in Northern California, I distinctly heard him say "Gavno pravda".

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: After taking the temporary ...

"I distinctly heard him say "Gavno pravda"."

You need to work on his grammar.

[jake]

Re: After taking the temporary ...

He's a dog who spent his formative years between Berkeley and San Francisco, the poor thing. He does his best.

[Alister]

Thumbs up for "technology trebuchets"...

Many successful launches...

[Anonymous Coward]

Corbyn and McDonnell are offering to blow up the British economy for free.

[tiggity]

Brexit currently blowing up the UK economy quite well

[Anonymous Coward]

>Brexit currently blowing up the UK economy quite well

Corbyn & McDonnell are hardcore Bennites which mean they hate the EU as did Benn and want to see us out.

[teknopaul]

I love in when right-wingers try to blame Brexit on Corbyn.

[Anonymous Coward]

>I love in when right-wingers try to blame Brexit on Corbyn.

And I shake my head in disbelief when left wingers attempt economics.

[amanfromMars 1]

Dinosaurs ..... Infesting and Running Riot in the Palace of Westminster

Here's another head shake in disbelief reality ..... which surely extraordinarily renders Parliament unfit for Future RapidE Progress and will effectively exclude Parliamentarians from Leading Virtual Movements and Virtual Leading Movements.

ANY NAME MP

HOUSE OF COMMONS

LONDON SW1A 0AA

Thank you for your e-mail. I respond to correspondents by letter and not by email, so please ensure you have included your full mailing address.

​If you are a constituent and have provided your full postal address I will write to you to answer any issues that you have raised or to let you know what representations I have made on your behalf.

​As there is a strict Parliamentary convention that I do not interfere in other Members’ constituencies I am unable to take matters up for non-constituents. You can find out who your MP is by going to: www.parliament.uk.

Given the volume of correspondence I currently receive I much regret that I am no longer able to respond personally to every letter as I have a duty to prioritise my constituents. However, I still review the correspondence frequently and am grateful that you have taken the trouble to get in touch.

With every good wish,

Any Name

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Dinosaurs ..... Infesting and Running Riot in the Palace of Westminster

Re: Dinosaurs ..... Infesting and Running Riot in the Palace of Westminster, it would be excellent to be proved wrong.

cc Cabinet Officers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Corbyn and McDonnell are offering to blow up the British economy for free."

The money in tax havens isn't really part of the British economy. It's just resting in a nice airy bank vault (well, hard disk actually).

[amanfromMars 1]

IT's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and Becomes More Radically Fundamental with Every Passing 0Day

Is this a soulmate which I see before me,

The word toward my heart? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, vital viable vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A friend and fiendish of the mind, and a novel creation, ..... Billy ShakeASpear's Bud, Hack2Death

And then there were at least two ....... which is complex power squared rather than just simple energy doubled.

Whenever there is that real extrapolation in creatively disruptive channels communicating sublimely and supremely, are just but a Few, overwhelmingly influential ..... and as a One, a Singularity with Parities.

[hatti]

Not just the article itself

Even the comments section has been tampered with using the glib dry humour and knob gags (intelliphalus) algorithm.

You just can't see the join.

[D Moss Esq]

Insufficiently contrite, Mr Bong

You fail to mention the "think tanks" you set up, e.g. Tony Blair's Institute for Global Change:

• It is unfair to expect Google, Facebook et al to pay tax, we must be grateful if they just "make meaningful, global contributions in support of basic human rights and public goods".

• Tax funds public services and it is therefore the duty of the public to pay it, particularly on:

– carbon "where distributed ledger technologies could be used to provide verifiable information about a product’s lifetime greenhouse gas contribution at point of sale, which could make higher prices for carbon-intensive products more palatable";

– congestion "where ubiquitous mobile devices make it possible to imagine dynamic pricing for driving on congested roads, with a corresponding reduction in other motoring taxes"

– land values "where new computational techniques and big data make it possible to estimate the undeveloped value of plots of land"; and, of course

– sugar "where advances in medical research can help us better estimate the long-term health costs associated with excessive consumption, in order to nudge people to make healthier choices".

• Thai assistants for the many, "as a pragmatic step forward, governments should immediately give every citizen a personal account manager".

[E 2]

"thought pathfinder"

Where's my gun?

[Lars]

Re: "thought pathfinder"

"Where's my gun?". Have you got toddlers?

[Denarius]

Now the last 50 years

make sense. For fake news it is scarily realistic satire. The intellectual suicide of the remnants of the West is really clear when amanfrommars[n] makes more sense than political and economic news. A beer to the author.

[TrumpSlurp the Troll]

I wondered where my kidney came from.

Thanks, Steve!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if you'd said "Hi, I'm Theresa May."

"Most of my party is working for the Russians."

That would have been a lot more believable.