I listen to a LOT of podcasts, mostly about politics, and most of them have done an entire show or a large part of a show about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Most have misunderstood exactly what CA have supposedly done with "psychographics" in the 2016 election. They were hired by the Ted Cruz campaign to do this microtargeting that has everyone up in an uproar, but it didn't work and Ted Cruz lost in the primary to Trump. They were then hired by Trump but his campaign lacked the infrastructure for such work so they just did standard social media stuff for him. They are really horrible people I'm sure, but they didn't install Trump into the Oval Office. And the frightening-sounding things they claim they can do did not work. Only the Weeds from Vox.com explained this fully. I thanked the team (Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, and Sarah Kliff) for really explaining everything thoroughly. Mr Yglesias retweeted me, and my phone kinda melted for a bit.
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The power of the #MeToo movement to transform societies has exerted pressure in a place few would have suspected it could ever reach: Russia. It sounds crazy following Vladimir Putin's 76% reelection total to talk about a free press in Russia, but at least in one respect journalists have found an issue to fight back on: sexual harassment.
As the World Editor of News Growl, it fell to me to write an article on yesterday's election for the presidency of the Russian Federation. Surprise, surprise, Vladimir Putin won with roughly 76% of the vote.
Of course, it was no surprise. But my gosh, some of the tactics that Putin supporters used to get out the vote were really weird. Lingerie models? Nice to look at, of course, but why use them to promote voting? Is this what Russian men need in order to take part in the political process? Yet that is exactly what Maxim magazine did. Their editor makes it clear (as quoted in my article on the Russian election result) that he wasn't really comfortable with the idea but had no choice. It was a "compromise" he had to make. That's weird, but by far the weirdest thing I came across was an unofficial but professionally produced video that drew on racism, homophobia, and paranoia to urge Russians to vote on Sunday. Imagine waking up one morning to find military conscription officers at your door (even though you are 52). That's bad, but one of the men at the door is black! Oh no! But it gets worse, there's a gay man in your kitchen. You have to house him because the government passed a law that forces people to take untaken gay men into their homes. Okay, this last part doesn't make any sense, but that's what the video says. Then, it says if the gay man doesn't find a partner in time, you yourself (presumably a God-fearing heterosexual) will have to become his partner. Frankly, when I read about this video I didn't believe what I read about it. Surely there was some sort of cultural miscommunication going on here. But then I found this video from Radio Free Europe which shows part of it and it's all true. Crazy One thing you can say for sure about the EU is they like their rules.
Take for instance Martin Selmayr. Not so long ago pretty much no one had ever heard of this guy even though he held one of the most powerful positions in the entire EU: chief of staff of the President of the EU Commission. Many people think it is actually him who has been running the Commission since 2014, not his boss Jean-Claude Junker. But anyway, Selmayr had a lot of power and really only one cloud on his horizon: Junker's term was set to end next year and as his chief of staff, Martin Selmayr's power would disappear in a great big poof! But, thankfully for Selmayr, the EU is full of complicated rules. Like all complex rules systems, there are plenty of loopholes if you know where to look. And luckily for Selmayr, the Eurotocracy will let you do pretty much anything as long as you stay within the rules, loopholes or not. Selmayr spotted that if he made the jump from staff for an elected official to civil servant, he would no longer have his power limited by the shelf-life of any benefactor. In the EU Civil Service, you get to stay as until you are ready to collect your (very generous) pension. If Selmayr could find a way to become General Secretary for the EU Civil Service, he would have a position more or less as powerful as the one he has now. And his current boss, the EU Commission President, can appoint the General Secretary of the EU Civil Service. So he had a clear path to ongoing power. There was just one problem. The EU already had a General Secretary of the Commission, and to be eligible to be appointed EU General Secretary you have to first serve as a Deputy General Secretary. How he did the next bit, I don't know exactly. I only know what he did: 1) He convinced the current General Secretary, Alexander Italianer, to resign. Like I say, I don't know how. But I bet it was cunning however he did it. 2) He got himself appointed Deputy General Secretary just as Italianer resigned. Then, at a meeting of the EU Commission that was held just after Italianer had resigned and he had been made Deputy General Secretary, he got his boss Jean-Claude Junker to announce Italianer's resignation and his appointment as Deputy General Secretary, and then slipped in a vote on Martin Selmayer being appointed General Secretary so late in the day that no one had noticed it was on the agenda. Job done. He also may have promised some incredibly generous golden handcuffs to the outgoing commissioners who are set to leave in 2019 as well. That would get him votes anyway. So Martin Selmayr is my hero. Not because he is good, or ethical. The guy just knows how to work a system. Really well. You've got to admire than, no matter how cynical his power grab was. |
AuthorSteve has many disparate and unconnected interests. This, he thinks, entitles him to claim the label "Renaissance Man." Archives
March 2019
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