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| Stirrup embellished in a rather amazing 1800's Art Deco-esque style including a boat |
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| Can't read this, but it's beautiful. |
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| Shrine outside of the Ueno Park area surrounding the Museum. |
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Tokyo National Museum
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Trump is the "White Hat" Hacker of US Democracy
So-called "White Hat" hackers get paid to expose flaws in computer systems to the public. I would like to generalize their scope to include hacking democratic institutions, Mass Media, and FaceBook.
"White Hats" employ their skills to uncover security risks to the customers that hire them. Little did we know in the Fall of 2016, that together with Steven K. Bannon, billionaire donors, and further aided by commercialized social surveillance systems enthusiastically prepared for exploit by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), that America's democracy itself was about to be exposed to one of the most uncontrolled and bizarre experiments in her short history -- a public hacking of democratic institutions in full view, exposing the flaws of human nature, Politics, Mass Media and our Democratic systems.
The unexpected 2016 presidential result required a mixture of at least 3 ingredients:
(1) The US "Pay-to-Play" political system.
(2) The "Corporate Media Machine" co-opted for entertainment.
(3) Unchecked exploitation of social surveillance (ie Facebook)
The above ingredients explosively combined to propel a perhaps unwilling administration to the US Presidency. Let's begin with the pay-to-play political system. In 2016 there was a groundswell of support for an authentic grassroots effort to displace the status-quo in Washington. The backdrop consisted of disillusionment with Obama following two terms in which "Change" didn't materialize for wide swathes of the US that continued to de-industrialize in absence or real support from Washington. Backers of Bernie Sanders organized and challenged the well established Clinton camp in an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination. At the Democratic Party convention, Clinton was nominated based on SuperDelegates, an opaque and biased element of the Party apparatus that favored Clinton based on pay-to-play politics, and that ultimately backfired in the General Election.
At the same time that the Democratic Party was being divided, the Republican party was attempting to nominate a traditional establishment candidate along the lines of Cruz, Rubio or Bush. During this time what I refer to as the "Corporate Media Machine" (along the lines defined by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent) was ramping up Media coverage of long-shot candidate Trump in exchange for massive commercial gain due to boosted ratings. This candidate was known to the public from decades of scandal, countless interviews including public musings of a presidential bid, and a run of reality TV programming. The candidate was both well aware of the hypocrisy of the media and also of how to benefit from it. In fact, at almost every turn, during grassroots rallies and TV interviews, he spoke directly to Media executives about the ratings that he personally was providing for them. The media continued to keep cameras trained on Trump all the way through. In summary, the candidate was already well positioned to exploit ingredients (1) and (2). The trigger of this explosive combination of ingredients was provided by the Alt Right figure of Stephen K. Bannon, aided by ingredient (3): the unchecked exploitation of Social Media which I redefine here as Social Surveillance (eg Facebook).
Social Surveillance (eg FaceBook) had greatly aided campaigns before -- just take a look at Obama's back-to-back successes utilizing the enormous platform. In the 2008 and 2012 elections, the $800M and $1B cash pile that the campaign brought in was provisioned to leverage systematic targeting and influencing of voters. Looking outside of the US, the same platform was widely lauded for toppling regimes in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. Little thought was given at the time at the implications of the technology on our home shores. Anyone who doubts how surveillance-oriented FaceBook is should read comments by NSA figures and those who actually designed and implemented the software -- without a doubt it was and is intended to vacuum up, store and distribute it's users personal information, usually unbeknownst to them, for the purposes of monetizing it. The fact that the data was "weaponized" was coincidental. The practice continues to this day until the public decides to leave the platform en-masse.
Much more can and should be said about the three ingredients above which combined explosively to unwittingly propel a narcissist property developer to the US presidency. What is important is that "White Hat Hack" occurred out in the open and in public exposing deep flaws in our human nature, our corporate and media systems and pay-to-play political process that fails to support truly democratically elected candidates such as Sanders. What is left for us to do now is to impose checks on our human nature, our technology (as is done more widely in Europe today) and our Politics, Corporations and Mass Media. In the case of November 2016, and the ensuing years the phenomena has been laid bare in a way that I hope will harden our democracy's defenses and prepare my generation to see the pros and cons of our connected world and our ever tribal tendencies.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this brief article in the comments section below.
"White Hats" employ their skills to uncover security risks to the customers that hire them. Little did we know in the Fall of 2016, that together with Steven K. Bannon, billionaire donors, and further aided by commercialized social surveillance systems enthusiastically prepared for exploit by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), that America's democracy itself was about to be exposed to one of the most uncontrolled and bizarre experiments in her short history -- a public hacking of democratic institutions in full view, exposing the flaws of human nature, Politics, Mass Media and our Democratic systems.
The unexpected 2016 presidential result required a mixture of at least 3 ingredients:
(1) The US "Pay-to-Play" political system.
(2) The "Corporate Media Machine" co-opted for entertainment.
(3) Unchecked exploitation of social surveillance (ie Facebook)
The above ingredients explosively combined to propel a perhaps unwilling administration to the US Presidency. Let's begin with the pay-to-play political system. In 2016 there was a groundswell of support for an authentic grassroots effort to displace the status-quo in Washington. The backdrop consisted of disillusionment with Obama following two terms in which "Change" didn't materialize for wide swathes of the US that continued to de-industrialize in absence or real support from Washington. Backers of Bernie Sanders organized and challenged the well established Clinton camp in an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination. At the Democratic Party convention, Clinton was nominated based on SuperDelegates, an opaque and biased element of the Party apparatus that favored Clinton based on pay-to-play politics, and that ultimately backfired in the General Election.
At the same time that the Democratic Party was being divided, the Republican party was attempting to nominate a traditional establishment candidate along the lines of Cruz, Rubio or Bush. During this time what I refer to as the "Corporate Media Machine" (along the lines defined by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent) was ramping up Media coverage of long-shot candidate Trump in exchange for massive commercial gain due to boosted ratings. This candidate was known to the public from decades of scandal, countless interviews including public musings of a presidential bid, and a run of reality TV programming. The candidate was both well aware of the hypocrisy of the media and also of how to benefit from it. In fact, at almost every turn, during grassroots rallies and TV interviews, he spoke directly to Media executives about the ratings that he personally was providing for them. The media continued to keep cameras trained on Trump all the way through. In summary, the candidate was already well positioned to exploit ingredients (1) and (2). The trigger of this explosive combination of ingredients was provided by the Alt Right figure of Stephen K. Bannon, aided by ingredient (3): the unchecked exploitation of Social Media which I redefine here as Social Surveillance (eg Facebook).
Social Surveillance (eg FaceBook) had greatly aided campaigns before -- just take a look at Obama's back-to-back successes utilizing the enormous platform. In the 2008 and 2012 elections, the $800M and $1B cash pile that the campaign brought in was provisioned to leverage systematic targeting and influencing of voters. Looking outside of the US, the same platform was widely lauded for toppling regimes in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. Little thought was given at the time at the implications of the technology on our home shores. Anyone who doubts how surveillance-oriented FaceBook is should read comments by NSA figures and those who actually designed and implemented the software -- without a doubt it was and is intended to vacuum up, store and distribute it's users personal information, usually unbeknownst to them, for the purposes of monetizing it. The fact that the data was "weaponized" was coincidental. The practice continues to this day until the public decides to leave the platform en-masse.
Much more can and should be said about the three ingredients above which combined explosively to unwittingly propel a narcissist property developer to the US presidency. What is important is that "White Hat Hack" occurred out in the open and in public exposing deep flaws in our human nature, our corporate and media systems and pay-to-play political process that fails to support truly democratically elected candidates such as Sanders. What is left for us to do now is to impose checks on our human nature, our technology (as is done more widely in Europe today) and our Politics, Corporations and Mass Media. In the case of November 2016, and the ensuing years the phenomena has been laid bare in a way that I hope will harden our democracy's defenses and prepare my generation to see the pros and cons of our connected world and our ever tribal tendencies.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this brief article in the comments section below.
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| Image: https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/ceos/republicans-ted-cruz-and-john-kasich-team-up-in-stop-trump-deal-ng-66a20154f4b478bf6e677a6db10c9e66
Downloadable Version (PDF):
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