gaslighting – mil's page

aside, definition, design philosophy, rationale

“Good to meet you … Miljenko Williams” | on dark figure, gaslighting, security and the future of Western democracy

A very brief video that an unknown person or persons posted about me in 2015, just as I began to move closer to the UK Guardian newspaper

The day our security agencies decided that neo-crime and dark figure did not need a law-enforcement response was the day we opened the doors to a future Ukraine; an organised criminality in the UK where we now have an army of embedded criminals in all levels of society which outnumbers the British armed forces; and a broad and widely shared sense of citizen, perhaps even political-party, hopelessness about everything that happens quite toxically to Western and related democracies. That is, none of us can reasonably believe in better any more.
Mil Williams, Chester UK, 18th January 2024

Screenshots of a very brief video which piggybacked on an article the UK Guardian newspaper had just published back in 2015 on my relationship with the newspaper, being this latter the final screenshot in the above series

What follows …

What follows is a series of observations on a real case of targeted gaslighting on a democratic citizen — myself, being one of many similarly affected over the years by a nexus, I guess, of tech-bros and outlier security interests in the UK, and maybe other states and actors, too: a longitudinal case which already led to my undue and improper incarceration for a month in a UK mental facility back in 2003, after an experience in a broken-backed open-source community the previous year of 2002 called OpenOffice.org.

• gb2earth.com/citizenx

This open-source site was sponsored and paid for mainly by the then Sun Microsystems, but the dysfunctionality arose from both sides: corporate and independent developers in equal parts.

First, then, a poem about the impact this has had on me over the years.

“tech-bro”: a #poem by #milwilliams

in english a bro of the tech nature killed me

in swedish a bro is a bridge

if only i’d been able to make my life again

in a land like the latter where good people rule

but my pain and misery all came from the place

where i had the misfortune to be born

and whilst in swedish a tech-bro

would be a path to a better future

in english it’s better so much better

to be burned

but since i don’t believe in burning anyone

i reason the problem is myself

and so it’s myself

that mathematically must be removed

from any equation that includes

the future of humankind

this is why when the tech-bros

of english-speaking lands

burnt my person

in the manner of a most inflammatory form

of gaslighting imaginable

in its scorn

i never forgot

what they did to me

just as i began to fly

and just as i began to try

to lift my head higher

and fly to better skies

why now i burn those bros memories

even though arson is not my thing

but not as beautiful bridges of swedish ways

but as stupid men of patriarchal “hey!”

So what do we do?

The day our security agencies decided that neo-crime and dark figure did not need a law-enforcement response was the day we opened the doors to a future Ukraine, an organised criminality in the UK where we now have an army of embedded criminals in all levels of society which outnumbers the British armed forces, and a broad and widely shared sense of citizen, perhaps even political-party, hopelessness about everything that happens quite toxically to Western and related democracies. That is, none of us can reasonably believe in better any more:

• gb2earth.com/hunch/neocrime | #darkfigure #neocrime

We need to believe in better, of course: but in order to begin to have a right to do so we must say enough is enough in the grey area of discretionary law enforcement and security where discretion is given a bad name in the interests of expediency. That is, in precisely that area of operational manoeuvres which utilises both dark figure and what I prefer to call neo-crime, whatever side of the law we find ourselves on.

We can only reacquire the authority Western democracy once had if we start to deliver on this: only this. And we shall not, until and if we do.

Ever again.

If you find what I have written today interesting and/or engaging, please do get in touch:

• mil.williams@gb2.earth

definition, design philosophy, rationale

The day #europe made #bigtech human-sized

Manchester, meantime, being for me a time of three hard-fought days, has finally demonstrated that in some notable places, places which I sense pride themselves on being as purposeful as the Swedish nation clearly is, this thing we globally term “security in the UK” can also have a heart and soul: a real humanity and application.
Mil Williams, 26th August 2023, Chester UK

It’s good, the last three days in Manchester — though for me utterly draining.

In my life, security in two places had given me space to tell my story. Neither of those two places were located in the UK. Quite the opposite: here, particularly in Chester, Belfast and London, my story had been bent out of shape to the outside world.

In Croatia, the US looked out for me, without me being a US citizen, during my journey back to Spain on a coach at the end of November, the beginning of December 2002.

British security and politics then ensured during the leadup to the summer of 2003 that it would become possible to lock me up unduly for a month. And drug me since then.

Sweden this year is where good people also looked out for my interests. The gaslighting and attempted gaslighting that took place on my person was watched and observed and witnessed and, I think, recognised:

Neo-terrorism on the individual slide-deck | A description of a tech-driven longitudinal #gaslighting committed by #bigtech and related (related means to some extent any and all other sectors of human endeavour) over the years

Manchester, meantime, being for me a time of three hard-fought days, has finally demonstrated that in some notable places, places which I sense pride themselves on being as purposeful as the Swedish nation clearly is, this thing we globally term “security in the UK” can also have a heart and soul: a real humanity and application.

It’s therefore my intention to begin to indicate publicly that the security which listened to me in Manchester should form a close partnership with anything that ultimately gets off the ground in my Swedish endeavours.

‘Happy to rewrite the rulebook, then. This is not me being tribal: this is me finding it possible to trust others because evidence is provided that validates that trust. As in Sweden all the time I’ve been there on-and-off recently.

And this being exactly the value-add I want to deliver with my projects.

For remember this: terrorist atrocities were delivered by humans using tools — machines — as extensions of themselves. They were not stopped by tech partners who said it was enough to have such machines supported by humans:

How humans with tools beat tools with humans hands-down on the big and terrifying occasions

And it’s not enough to slide easily over the fact that humans are the strongest link in criminality and the weakest in security. We have to begin to seriously question that if this is currently true, why we have been enabling it to remain unnecessarily so for such a long time.

• www.secrecy.plus/fire

Business model and an easy monetisation, anyone?

Myself, I want to reconfigure #ai so that it makes us more important as players in the modern world, not less. Industrialise is humans back in, not continue to automate us out:

• hmagi.com | www.secrecy.plus/hmagi #hmagi

And my enemies — many in the field of #bigtech but also small too, I realise and now sense — have known all this time the buttons they had to press. Make me think the enemies were others, when really the paymasters have always been the same.

Manchester, Stockholm, a wider Europe, and of course the US, then? Institutions, agencies, organisations and governments all?

Open doors; but no longer open house.

Because we enjoin the battle not to lose bravely but win rightfully …

____________________

and what if i am right in respect of #neoterrorismontheindividual (#noi)? and what if people like me are simply canaries in the mine?

and maybe the real problem here is that it’s not my sensitivity that makes me personally dysfunctional but your insensitivity that enables putin, society-wide, over and over again, to leave babies in their cots, bleeding red and dead as they slept.
mil williams, 14th august 2023, stockholm sweden

• neo-terrorism on the individual: how to undermine society without society ever realising it’s been happening | #darkfigure #neocrime | slide-deck version here

our problem

your problem is as follows.

if i am right re #noi, it’s been undermining all our societies for decades:

our = western, as well as locally here

and where i am right, the owners of #neoterrorismontheindividual and its processes and tools collect data on everyone, without exception. however, their owners and users choose when to use this data: they pick their moments and actual targets really judiciously.

mostly, it only gets visibly used against those who notice: what happened to me in 2003 in the uk.

but imagine if everyone began to notice: what then?

then, all the data these bad actors have collected on you over the years — keeping their powder utterly dry, if you like, in expectation of inevitable future need — would allow them to rapidly up their game overnight: because then, for them, the threat level would actually begin to exist. to date, it’s been all one-sided: theirs.

so what then?

#noi would become a visible act of repression, not an invisible one. it wouldn’t be #neocrime any more. what before sociology and criminology called #darkfigure:

• crimehunch.com/neocrime

and maybe #ukraine is not a sign of putin’s strengths in longitudinal gaslighting, though it might be easy to come to this conclusion.

maybe it’s a sign of his ultimate desperation. for his version of #noi, even factoring in pandemic, banking scandals, and three wars of his making in the last fifteen years, haven’t led quite enough to the total dislocation of western economies he sorely — and i’m sure dearly — expected would be delivered after all these years of having being a kgb acolyte of the worst, turned thug in fancy suits of the most horrible and politically immobilising kind.

because #ukraine has never just been about territory. that is, not physical. equally, and maybe much more, it’s been about distracting and dismantling western unity and sense of time & place: all good people’s mental territories and landscapes.

in the end, putin and his ilk are not even spymasters: they’re chessmasters in the most terrifying traditions. it’s chess they’re playing, not politics. total surrender, but sometimes — right to the end — with you not even thinking it’s going to be your fate. like the jews in the ghettos: worse than this, it surely can’t get.

in conclusion?

i can live with being ignored. i can live with being gaslit daily, in the trivial and incompetent ways they do. i can live with the #ukraines we have awaiting us. i suffered the #balkan one. i survived that, even at the cost of being improperly incarcerated as a result of the another democratic dismantling in 2003: the terrifying lead-up to #iraq which led to my own provoked mental dysfunctionality.

and we can’t forget 9/11: we never must.

and we can’t forget #pandemic either, though we already are: how the mercilessly rich knew it was coming and prepared their supply lines to benefit.

but let’s just imagine that for every hyper-sensitive person you assume people like me are, what you’re really witnessing are canaries in the mine: and meantime, as you laugh at us, and those who cause pandemic graft, invasions like #ukraine, disasters like #iraq, tragedies like 9/11 … and #brexit, and #trump, and all that stuff … well, maybe we’re not sensitive to irrelevance; maybe, instead, you’re insensitive to the embedded criminality that starts with the smallest of communities, the tiniest of acts, the symbolic gaslighting of the idiot on the metro … and maybe the real problem here is that it’s not my sensitivity that makes me personally dysfunctional but your insensitivity that enables putin, society-wide, over and over again, to leave babies in their cots, bleeding red and dead as they slept.

“Building the FEARless CITIZEN” #NoFutureUkraines

definition, design philosophy, rationale

if you must, make sure you’re legal, you take care of your own, and above all you know your enemy

in #stockhom #sweden #sverige, what was broached in #dublin #ireland in 2016 is now possible here.

and i feel like it is new; not returning to an awful toxic past and having to pay every day for it, as it remains close and clammy to the touch.

no.

not that.

solving the putin problem

i was asked on the train today what the keys are to solving the #putinproblem.

the #putinproblem includes #trump, and #brexit, and #facebook escaping with virtual murder as #cambridgeanalytica became the fall guy for the inevitable outcome of #zuckerberg’s choice of business model: this outcome being the savage and unremitting dismantling of citizen agency in modern western and associated democracies.

it includes everything that means even professionals will think, when they take a life-changing decision on someone in their life-changing nominal charge, they do so with this agency i mention: no one else is furtively intervening. and god forbid that those intervening might be criminals on the scale of #putin’s #russia.

so the keys to solving these #complexproblems longitudinally and long-term are …?

first: accepting how we’ve been part of the problem

first, everyone who wants to join me in this battle in favour of a new democracy and against the #tech-driven #gaslighting that has been designed, developed and implemented over decades must accept they both tolerated and in some senses embraced #neoterrorismontheindividual because they used it themselves to shape their societies. they must take it firmly on the chin, as i do, that we are still part of the problem.

and whilst they/we were better at it than the enemy — #russia, a #badmoney without sovereign frontiers, #bigtech in practically all its manifestations — all was kinda ok. people like myself did get improperly incarcerated by proficient users of symbolic communication such as the #british, and by extension the #irish, but those of us who had to suffer such indignities and injustices were relatively small in number. i suppose.

second: how we’ve enabled the enemy

the problem is when the enemy gets better than you could ever imagine at this #neoterrorismontheindividual i uncover. and an even bigger challenge: when you simply have no inkling that they have got so much better than you, nor indeed for how long … nor when it all started to go belly-up.

• crimehunch.com/neocrime

this is what i say has happened already. i was saying it somehow in my #criminaljustice dissertation back in 2017. i realise in hindsight now that both the #british and #irish agreed and were as one: i had to be scoped out of academic circulation. symbolic language is a mark of the #british security state’s capacity to control a society without ever taking ownership. (the #irish — suffering the colonising #english — had to compete against this: and we know the #tech adage about being careful who you compete against because, one fine terrible day, you’ll become just like them.)

and so see how cozying up to these #espionage ways and means enabled deep #russian interests close to #putin to embed themselves in #uk football clubs, financial institutions and other channels where money flows freely and conveniently.

third: symbolism as a cancer to democracy

wherever a country prefers to use #symbolism to rule we have a cancer: a cancer on democracy; on the opportunities for democracy to flourish; on the chances that democracy might sustain and renew itself where needs be.

‘question is: are the upsides of using #symbolic systems worth the downsides? maybe they are: #espionage is a common thread throughout #human #history. so maybe all ok in this sense (despite the occasional collateral damage such as myself back in 2002-2003 and then again in 2004, and in 2017 … and many more times i guess even i haven’t yet sussed).

but it’s NOT ok when the genie whose bottle we uncorked centuries ago becomes owned by the enemy under our noses.

so to answer, finally, the question i was posed on the train this morning: if #zuckerberg and the illegitimate influencing of democratic discourse … if #brexit … if #trump and insurrection … and ultimately if #putin’s three wars in fifteen years culminating in his unforgivable invasion of #ukraine … if all this doesn’t provide the evidence we need in order to say we’ve currently, deeply, awfully lost the war of #espionage; that our enemies far outplay us; and that tolerating and even embracing the tools described in my slide-deck below are something we can continue to do … you really really do, sadly so too, have zero self-awareness.

fourth: solutions and caveats

and i’m not saying don’t use the tricks i define in the slide-deck. i’m saying:

1. if you do sanction their use, do so legally.

2. if you do sanction their use, then do not do so against your own, just because they’re inconvenient voices and thinkers. (that leads to a dismantled democracy from within, and thus supports the enemy even more profoundly than they could hope for.)

3. and last but not least, if you do end up seeing no alternative, never never never show by default or inaction that you underestimate the enemy because #bigtech #corporations tell you that you have all the tools you need. and all the tools the enemy might have.

• crimehunch.com/terror

Tag: gaslighting