Bleeding Edge

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about trust.

Last year I had more than a Million and a half Twitter followers and because I supported Donald Trump for the Presidential elections, my friend little boy Jack Dorsey of Twitter removed all of them from my account and shut me down for a few months and when they released my account it had only 700 followers…

Nice work twitter twats. Nice work if you can get it, and if you want to be a real p.o.s. like the fascist little boy Jack Dorsey that managed to get Twitter to it’s knees… Well done Jackie boy. Now go get stuffed.

But the thing is that even now that I have my account the Twitter moronic twats keep remove my followers daily. So what one to do? This and with all the other news of fascist Democrats that’s coming out — it might appear that we are living in an untrustworthy world.

In a world where you cannot trust anybody.

Indeed, who can you trust, when you keep getting surprised each and every day with the level of corruption and criminality never before seen in America?

After the Florida school shooting, there are a lot of people that now advocate for taking our guns away…

But whose interest do they serve?

Whose interests do the Gun control freaks serve?

And do we know, who are these people screaming and shouting as they gear up and scheme with the Democrats and the Internet trolls and Propaganda bots, to take away our guns?

I’ve come to know something about it recently form a personal experience…

Because indeed I’ve had a recent experience with two scam artists that showed up for one of my Angel Investors class and tried to gain my confidence to become my trusted confidants and associates.

I played along and got to engage with them in order to find out their true designs and soon enough they revealed themselves to be spies (no shit) for Iran…

To make matters worse they engaged in dangerous espionage against the United States while in front of me, they were playing the innocent all American immigrant. Yet these dangerous people, that supposedly came to America because they were prosecuted for practicing the Bahai faith…

What hogwash…

This couple fo full blown spies are verdant Muslim operatives practicing their jihad and seeking to overthrow our democratically elected government and get another Muslim loving Obama-Clinton loser in the White House, so that we can give them another bunch of Billions and support the development of the Ayatollah’s nuclear weapons…

Imagine that.

Muslim Iranians sabotaging our Democracy in favor of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama policies that favored Iran and the crazy Mullahs, that seek to turn the World into a nuclear winterland, just so their teleological jihad will be completed and their Islamic dictatorship will be enforced throughout the nations of this Earth.

What deluded bastards. A couple of vermin, spies of the lowest quality, that have come to the United States because of the lax immigration controls and the silly raproachment with the Theocrats of Tehran that the stupid administration of Clinton-Obama looked to carry favor with…

And now we have the stupidest spies in the world — those scions of Tehran that are loose in SeaTac and Tukwila, stockpiling weapons, and propagandizing against President Trump and in favor of the Democratic party. We now have these losers amongst us, because Tehran uses the money we gave them to pay us back in this way. We deserve that backstabbing since the spy handlers of Tehran believe that Hillary Clinton and her sidekick and extreme muslim Huma Abedin, along with the cryptomuslim Ellison, and all the other globalists of the Democratic party, are the people they want to see in power in the United States because it serves their interests.

And that’s why the Iranians employ their domestic spies to unleash propaganda against ourselves and cause divisions and rancor that might incapacitate the president and make his actions less effective, sine they are really afraid of Donald Trump…

Why Iranian propaganda about taking away the guns of American citizens?

Because they are a bloody ruthless dictatorship and they have perfected the art of suppressing dissent at home and are trying their hand here in America too. Of course here in the US, they are doing this in conjunction with the Democratic party, because the Democrats too, have perfected over the years the art of suppressing dissent in the same way as practiced by authoritarian governments everywhere.

Indeed, for most of human history, the solution was simple. Plentiful use of brutal force. Punish people severely enough when they step out of line, and you deter potential protesters. As for the ones that persist — there are bullets, disappearances, secret jails, entrapments, family pressures, children abductions and worse..

But why go through all that trouble when in the age of the internet and during times of Mass Media “fake news” and yellow journalism — there are easier ways to tame dissent and use Goebbels style propaganda to influence friends and foes alike?

Today’s Iranian spies in America, use sophisticated marketing funnels to target their propaganda towards the people that are easier to accept their message and thus be influenced in favor of their cause.

Namely the Iranian spies target primarily, the young Millennial Democrats, and their brethren, Generation X, and Generation Y, vehemently along with all those disillusioned extreme leftist Democrats and Bernie Sanders socialist followers — with a message of “Why not try-on a hijab?” or “Why don’t we try to have Sharia law in America?” and all those silly yet catchy messages, such as those aimed at the easily influenced young ones, who are told that under Islamic Finance — you don’t have to pay your credit card debt anymore (interest-free).

Iran’s strategy, for the nightly news is that the government actively manipulates its population, but that it shouldn’t necessarily appear that way to its citizens. Part of the reason for this is the Mullah’s unusual approach to propaganda, which is to avoid refuting skeptics, or defending policies, and instead they choose to flood the TV & digital space with funny & happy news, and with shows about the twin evils of the world as they see it: USA & Israel.

So the Dictators of Iran, in the name of their muslim god Allah and his prophet Mohammed, along with his grandson Ali — are always in a fighting mode as they stream propaganda in the form of frequent and massively networked newsposts by an army of human bots, that flood the Persian walled garden of the Internet, with the opinions and the thoughts of the Government minders and the nanny state. All that interspersed widely through the day, with funny shows, commentary, and religious discussions on television and on the radio about the Evil “Hamrica” and the satan of “Yisrail.”

And here’s what the strategic logic behind this approach might be, at least as it appears this those of us who are not authoritarian stooges.

Methinks, the main purpose of Iran’s spies and propaganda is distraction, division, and incapacitating ambivalence, that freezes the citizens of this Democratic Republic and prevents us from defending our interests at home and abroad.

This is truly the goal of the Iranians, and their partners, the Hezbollah and the Muslim Feminist Pussy hat wearing combine that walks the streets of American arm-in-arm with the Iranian spies and stooges.

This much is evident because their elaborate marketing funnels, their blogs, and their posts, along with their comments — are all highly coordinated within certain time periods, and the posts are written uniformly over time, but always the same talking points prevail. They’re actually really bursts of News that combined make the Network vibe in a certain way that is to the liking of the censors, and  the watchers of Iran’s oppressed population at home and abroad. By unleashing many slightly different lots, of similarly themed posts, at the same time, they achieve greater reach and longevity for the basic talking points the government and the deep state espouse. The basic idea seems to be to flood the internet with a positive spin, on the political noise, in order to drown out any complaints or bad news, and distract from more serious or problematic issues that concern the people, and might lead to unrest, demonstrations, and rebellion.

And they believe this is the most effective way to control political discourse, much like the handlers of CNN and the other fake news networks in America, coordinate all their talking points with the deep state that feeds them the daily news cycle’s seemingly interesting, yet innocuous to the Propaganda Meisters’ main interests and politically profitable concerns.

Because I think that both the Iranians, and therapies in America are all Mass Media Masters of Content and Marketing, because they have realized that Democratic politics in the Untied States of America, is all about controlling the narrative, blinding the people through propaganda, misleading the population, and succeeding in their aims by setting the agenda of their choice. And while they do their dastardly work — they are appearing to the useful idiots and the willing fools, as if they work for your own political benefit, since they invariably support tried and true policy proposals of the Democratic party — albeit twisted ever so slightly to reflect their own nasty bias too.

And they are rather effective because they not only own the media — but they own the leftist progressive Hollywood cadres, the Entertainment industry, and the US Academia as well. Yet, even though they control 95% of the information flow, they’re not satisfied, and they want 100%. But that is always impossible as long as we have still some independent churches, some libertarian clubs, some conservative think tanks, and some other free community organizations and independent political parties like the Lincoln party.

So if you see the same policy at play between Iran’s spies in America, coordinating policy proposals with Obama and crooked Hillary Clinton operatives — you know that you hit upon the motherload of propaganda crimes, foreign political influence corruption, and undue collusion of the Democratic party and Iran.  Because indeed, even inside the cyberspace where politicians and government officials want people to talk only about the American issues that reflect well on them, and only about those issues that polarize the American citizenry, and do not paint a bad picture for the Democratic party — they are carefully sowing the seeds of destruction. The Iranian spies calculation is pretty simple: If they engage critics on issues that are complicated, or reflect poorly on the government, they only amplify the attention those issues receive. So their approach is to ignore the criticisms, and shift attention to other topics, and they do that by deluging the internet with propaganda that puts the American Democratic party in a brilliantly positive light, and consequently, they present President Donald Trump as a sinister bully and a women’s “player.”

Of course, on the face of it, this is not too bad, yet something more sinister, is that the authorities in Iran permit just enough criticism to offer the illusion of dissent, but they make absolutely certain that there’s never enough criticism to spark any kind of collective action. Therefore, no more Green Revolutions, or the Spring or Winter Tehran rebellions. That is why Iran not only monitors the online information environment, in order to collect information about the public, and what they’re thinking, and in that sense, what they want people communicating freely about — but they also mange to sow discord in America and undermine the President of this open and transparent country.

Yet, another problem arises when you have too many people criticizing the government at the same time. That’s when they react, because there is a constant risk of collective action, mass protest, or demonstrations, that might become something like the Green Revolution, all over again — and that is exactly what the Iranian dictatorial government apparatchiks want to avoid at any cost, so Iran’s government does its best to distinguish between useful criticisms, of the kind that helps them figure out how to satisfy the citizenry, and dangerous criticisms, of the kind that might lead to mass protests and public unrest or even the overthrow of the Koran totting black guard of Mullahs and Mujaheddin jihadists.

And the Ayatollahs, have got the game down pat, because they usually bid their time, and wait until the shy public reveals itself, and even the normally circumspect Iranians, reveal their harsh criticism of their government and speak openly about the possibility for major mobilization against the government — before they engage in overt censorship, and they swoop down on there unsuspecting opponents, and shut them down hard & fast, by beating the demonstrators senseless, by jailing the major public dissenters, by eliminating countless of protesters, and even by criminalizing and picking off one by one, all of the seemingly innocuous bloggers.

A new Foreign Policy study reveals that Iran, is the leading innovator on this front, of how the Iranian government fabricates social media posts for propaganda — which shows how Tehran, with the help of a massive army of government-backed internet commentators, floods the world-wide-web in Iran and in America, with pro-Iranian-regime issues propaganda. We estimate that there are more than a million of these Iranian government contractors, but that is a deep state secret of Iran and the Ayatollahs, so the numbers might very well be inaccurate.

I think that historically a lot of people in Iran, have thought it common knowledge about the things the government has done wrong, that are detrimental to the regime. Starting from the stupendous corruption that robs each person of basic dignity, and going down the list — you are bound to find tons of rightful grievances. Yet you can’t talk about it anywhere in Iran, and not even in America because on Facebook or Twitter, the moment that you start talking the Iran mess, and their nuclear weapons, and the Obama-cash that made they weapons program possible — they unleash their spies and their bots, so that they will shut you down in zero time.

Not only in the blogosphere, not only in the public square, not only in the University or at work — but everywhere else too. So you can only do one thing. Just grin and bear it. This is because of the idea that any criticism is detrimental to the regime, and has to be squashed. What we find in Iran, is that the slightest of criticism, can be very helpful to the regime because it can allow them to identify the perpetrators and respond accordingly. Yet they don’t want this criticism to exist in the Untied States because they cannot very well engage in a daily regiment of political assassinations within the US borders. So they instead choose to unleash their domestic and international spies to do the dirty job, and since they cannot control the conversation fully on their own — they employ the Democratic party to do their bidding within the United States of America…

But the type of common knowledge that’s really dangerous to the Iranian regime is knowledge of protests, or other forms of collective actions, or rebellious activities by ethnic, or religious minorities or by any other discontented groups, taking place anywhere in this vast country. That’s the major threat for the regime, because it can spread so easily. We’ve seen this over and over throughout world history: Regimes are most vulnerable when small protests escalate into something much broader. This is what Iran’s government is determined to avoid at any cost and that is what they try to prevent, by seeding the web constantly with “manufactured consent” comments, disseminated through their million strong  army of tin soldiers of propaganda.

And this is what’s different about Iran’s approach in the content of the propaganda: The government doesn’t refute critics or defend policies — instead, it overwhelms the population with positive news about the government, that they call “cheerleading content” in order to eclipse bad news, and divert attention away from actual problems, that might fester and erupt.

This has allowed the Iranian government to manipulate citizens mental scales of balanced reporting, without appearing to do so. It permits just enough criticism to maintain the illusion of dissent, and only acts overtly, when fears of mass protest, or collective action arise. Does this smack of fake news policies to you?

Yet, in order to learn more about Iran’s internet propaganda machine — we need to see how successful Iran has been at manipulating its population and, more importantly, how their brand of online propaganda has become a model for the propagation of authoritarianism in the Internet during the digital age of total information overload.

Indeed, it has become a giant problem, and it surely isn’t just me thinking about this issue of trust in the Mass Media, and in the News providers, because in America things are not very much different than what happens in Iran.  Today, all of five companies, control 100% of our News distribution systems, and that’s a recipe for totalitarian abuse and authoritarian corruption. Have you ever asked yourself this Question: Why is it that in America all the news is moving in the same direction?

At least in Iran it’s just one “owner” of the Mass Media and that one is Ayatollah dictatorship that makes up the government. In America we delude ourselves when we speak of plurality in Mass Media ownership. And this is the brokenness in our system, that we need to repair soonest. And that is why the competitive landscape of America’s journalism, can’t keep variety on the menu. Just turn on the Fake News and you’ll be blown away, by the same talking points over and over again. Switch channels and you see the same things. It’s all the same, in all venues, and no variety whatsoever…

Just like Iran.

At least in Iran the government acts as the regulator of a huge, complicated, and pretty fundamental thing – the information exchange, and the news we all consume for the reasons of Societal betterment. In Iran it is well understood by the Citizens that they are not free and cannot be trusted with a butter knife. That is why the Iranian people, are not allowed to have guns, and only the secret police, the police, and the military have weapons. Weapons that are often turned against their own citizens to subjugate them and when they kill them — they charge their families for the price of the bullets as well. Imagine that barbarity.

Yet why is this the method of propaganda by Iran, successful inside America too? Is it because of their spies dong such an excellent marketing job? Or is it something else entirely?

Could t be that they have some real American help in the form of insiders from the Democratic party that are gibing assistance and succor to this enemy of our country?

We need to answer this question urgently.

We absolutely need to answer it, because we have to make some sense out of this collusion between the Democratic Party and the Islamist militants and spies soonest. At least soon enough because we need to act and fight this propaganda, before we lose our Free Will, our Liberty, and our Democracy — and we end up like the oppressed Iranians.

We need to act, before we completely lose interest and appetite in consuming independent news, and we become alienated, and hardened divide nation of fools, like the Democrats… Because that is exactly what Tehran wants to accomplish at any cost.

But what is it that America wants?

And what does the America n government want for the good of it’s citizens?

Maybe it wants the same like the CNN leadership wants, and that is to keep on watching — in order to avoid their diminishing value, because they are found to be mostly Fake News.

The difficulty with online propaganda, and we’re seeing this in Iran, and in some other states around the world right now, is that it doesn’t function overtly like traditional forms of censorship. Most people object to blatant censorship. But online propaganda is a form of participation as well as form of censorship, so it’s difficult to know what the right policy is.

People want to introduce information on the web en masse, and that means a lot of noise and opinions and bots and commentators. Are there ways of regulating all of this without censoring ourselves? I think that’s a really hard question, and I don’t have the answers. But I think the world will have to struggle with this new reality of online propaganda, because it isn’t going away.

Yet, they all know that this Mass Media News Providing Business, comes with responsibility, and particularly about transparency of who owns, and who shares that responsibility, amongst the Corporate Citizens that own this country’s Mass Media assets, and thus enforce their point of view through, their direct ownership of their Mass Media empire.

China’s approach “strategic distraction,” but it’s really about undercutting the possibilities for organized dissent. Regimes have always tried to capture people’s attention and redirect it in less dangerous directions. The only thing new about Iran’s operation, is its use of the internet.

Research shows that people trust friends and family first, then celebrities, then government, then industry, then politicians, and last the Mass Media, who produce the loads of fake news.

But, let’s ask the primary question: “Why do people need to trust the Media in the first place?

We’re glad that people trust their families first and foremost, and then trust government to do their job, but mostly don’t trust the Mass Media, although they trust businesses to live up to their responsibilities.

People trust the integrity, competence and fundamental honesty of a business whenever they put food on their child’s plate, when they start up their car, when they put their savings in a bank, or when they show up for work in the morning… Business management and logistics are the trust ingredients, and the mechanisms behind how those products and services reach the end user, are so complicated that not one person could possibly understand or investigate them all, or live with the doubts – so as a shorthand, they use ‘Generalized Trust” to orient their decisions. It means that many more decisions can be automatic, not reflective, which saves a lot of time and energy.

But according to Edelman’s trust barometer, trust itself is hanging by a thread.

Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. Johan Thorbecke had this to say back in 1850s: “Trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback” or rather on a fast uber…

We traced the corrosion of trust back to a time when people put their faith in a political system and a legislative executive… and next… lost it. We wonder whether we are entering the age of regulation by customer expectations, administered through the social media, or whether one personally likes what is said or not, and that’s eventually good for democracy. Yes, alongside the space for doubt, the vacuum gets filled up with noise, offensive blether and out-and-out lies, so it’s easy to block one’s ears to anything you don’t want to hear; dissenting voices can build a constituency invisibly and ‘suddenly’ explode in anger.

So it’s natural for people to seek a signal they trust. And it looks like they trust people and organisations they like – not just because the products and services are good, but because they act in a way that is in accordance with their values. Research says that, at least when it comes to the News, people expect famililarity, clarity and honesty. Honesty, not just in what is said, but in not obscuring the things that matter, and in being truly honest in covering all angles of the New without an obvious political agenda.

What matters obviously depends on who you are and how high the stakes are.

What we’re seeing is that what matters in News, is far more than the price we pay for the acquisition of these News, but it also means that we care for the important things like the provenance of these News, and the method of Collection of the News that matter to our lives. Yea re savvy now because the production of fake news has become the biggest industry in today’s News World. Some things of course are too political, and some people are so emotionally invested, that they find it difficult to know, lest they have to change what they believe. But even there, interest is demonstrably growing, in getting the real deal…

We all live with a certain level of cognitive dissonance, but when people find things aren’t what they thought, they feel like their trust has been abused, and they get pretty cross. Companies, not just Mass Media companies, but especially News companies, would do well to understand that customer trust now depends on hard work, and the promise to not to fall short of people’s expectations. And as we are seeing the shift from consumer, to citizen, to advocate — with people choosing to make values based decisions and to support purpose based organisations, the Consumer, the Citizen, the Customer – are all empowered.

And it’s best for us to recall that it’s all the same person at the end of the day. Perhaps it’s not just about what’s cheap, believable, and convenient any more, it’s also got to be other things as well.

We have also seen businesses actively and aggressively using these rules for competitive advantage – and also have seen other businesses at the opposite end of the spectrum, ceasing to exist because they didn’t see it coming. Once it starts to affect the bottom line, it’s not just big talk.

“Trust costs you money, lack of trust can cost you your business”

It’s been reassuring to hear influential people in heavyweight businesses in profit-focused industries like automotives, banking, and high-tech say that they have to do the right thing, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s now core to their bottom line.

And I’ve been a huge supporter of that ethical rule of doing business. And the President is a good business person too, and as such he must have been fond of me, as I just found out, since he now follows me on Twitter too…

Well done Mr President.

About time too…

So, finally, what can we all do to earn and keep trust?

The brand and the PR communications people can’t do it all.

They can help manage crisis smartly, obviously, but, perhaps honesty, competence and integrity now needs to be on show at all times – not just when you’re up against the wall.

Research shows that transparency builds trust, even, and especially, when no one is watching…

Don’t bother with gaining “Street Cred” in Social Media. That’s children’s game.

Don’t collect Likes on Facebook, because it doesn’t mean anything.

Being a good corporate citizen truly and throughout your business is what builds trust.

Treating your staff fairly and treating your clients and customers decently is also what builds trust.

Having a business culture in accordance with decent principles & classic American values builds trust, and having the guns necessary to enforce that trust, is what truly builds a healthy community, and a safe society too.

Keep your guns well lubricated, clean and never aimed at anyone. But above all of that — stay true to goodness and the American way, with your inner compass always pointing to True North.

And don’t let any stooge of the Ayatollahs try to take your guns away.

Because the next thing you know — they will also take away your Democracy and your beloved Republic.

That’s it.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

And that is why the Iranian propagandists want the US government to take aways the guns of the people and to shred the 2nd Amendment.

Because they see the alignment of their dictatorial ideology with that of the US Democratic party that is aligned with them and their issues.

And for the Ayatollahs to succeed — they want a docile American public. And they know that if you take aways the guns from the population, they will become the sheeple that the Democrats need to continue their cooperation with Iran unopposed by anyone else.

That is what needed for the Iranian regime to get their load of nuclear weapons unopposed by any American government of the future…

Nothing else is needed, because ultimately, it’s what people say to each other about the issues, that truly matters.

And that’s why propaganda primarily aims at undermining the trust of the American people towards their own government.

But Thank God, we have a great Leader who understand all that and is opposed to the Iranian ayatollahs fully.

And his actions speak mountains. And that is what really builds trust amongst the American public towards it’s President and Warrior in Chief.

Hail to the Chief.