The Swarm Part Two
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Hackable Minds: The Silent War for Your Thoughts
The battlefield is no longer land—it's your mind. Manipulated by data, steered by AI, controlled by fear. You’re not being informed. You’re being programmed. Wake up—before it’s too late.
For over 70 years, the psychological profile of human beings has been under relentless study. In the aftermath of the Second World War, scholars, psychologists, and governments alike were driven by a single, haunting question: Why did the German people go along with Hitler and the Nazis? How could an entire population be swayed to participate in or ignore such profound evil?
This question sparked a massive international effort to understand human obedience, social conformity, and the mechanisms of mass persuasion. Studies like the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed disturbing truths about our willingness to obey authority and participate in cruelty when instructed to do so.
What began as a noble inquiry into the psychology of tyranny soon became something darker. Intelligence agencies, corporations, and behavioural scientists began to see the power in these insights. The focus quietly shifted from prevention to application.
Entire fields—social psychology, behavioural economics, neuromarketing—were transformed into tools of control. Techniques originally developed to understand trauma, compliance, and mental breakdowns were refined into instruments for influence.
Government programs like MK-Ultra and Tavistock Institute experiments revealed just how far authorities were willing to go in exploring the boundaries of psychological manipulation. The aim was clear: understand how to steer human thought and behaviour at scale.
***
There's a message in there somewhere.
It was impossible to lie in the midst of the hive mind.
We are not alone, it seems. I don't care whether you like me or not. Parasites of the mind which dare not speak their name, or say hello, or be honest. There to manipulate. There to deceive. There, if they only knew, to be destroyed.
We want him dead, they said of the Big Guy. So do we, came the response. And so it will be. In good time. Not a long time. First they must wither in the public square, for the ultimate humiliation. Everyone tortured with their own vulnerabilities.
He will ruin everything with his idle threats. The eagle eye soared well above.
They came pouring down the escarpment, those armies of the undead, or whatever you wanted to call them, while the eagles soared above them.
Imprinted into the landscape was a sense of sorrow, as if the heralds marked the end of a species, as if they had come to see the conquering of a peoples who didn't even know they were being conquered. Why it was important to document all this he had no idea. A holy duty. But why? For what end?
No end. Time flowed across the landscape like flood waters across a plain, the formations, the entities, the determinations of historical precedent, the hollowed out descendants, the fragile clinging to life, we came, we saw, we conquered. And yes, we were at the edge of a great precipice.
And as for Australia, the discontent sank wider and deeper. "Albo will save us," came the ironic downward twist, for everyone knew he had done more to destroy the country than any previous Prime Minister, and Australia had been systemtatically destroyed by decades of extremely poor governance.
Rise Up. Rise Up.
But instead the conquered laid down to die.
THE LEGACY STORY
SKY NEWS
‘He will make a very good PM’: Hanson throws support behind Dutton
Peter Dutton “will make a very good Prime Minister”, according to Pauline Hanson, with the One Nation leader declaring the Opposition Leader is “on the right path” with his policies leading into the federal election.
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
A mug’s game: Murdoch press’s anti-Labor budget coverage foreshadows election attacks to come
Media commentators were left gasping this week at news that not only had the government invited some social media influencers into the sacred space that is the budget lock-up, but that Labor had compensated some of them for their travel to Canberra. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age reported that the move was a campaign strategy to court prominent online voices. Some influencers will even be joining the campaign trail for a single day.
The Rear Window column in the Australian Financial Review dismissed the Instagram and TikTok content creators as “self-obsessed and self-promoting Gen Z and Millennial influencers”.
“Genius, really: they’re far less likely to be the ones to call out Chalmers playing funny with the numbers, and they’ll regurgitate the government’s messages directly into the phone screens of hundreds of thousands of young people,” Rear Window said. “Feel old yet?”
But the columnist got as good as he gave, with The Broke Generation’s Emma Edwards hitting back on Instagram: “Bold of the AFR to call me self obsessed and charge me $64 a month to be able to read the article saying so but OK.” Touché.
SMH
Popular ABC radio presenter Simon Marnie has slammed radio management on his final day with the broadcaster, after he was not afforded the opportunity to say a proper farewell to his colleagues across four decades.
Finishing up after several months of leave on Friday, Marnie sent a lengthy note to staff titled: “I thought I’d have an official farewell.” It outlined the farewell he imagined he would be given by the broadcaster, with his career spanning 40 years with the ABC, and lamented that it was not to be.
A sad indictment on a new strain of ABC management culture that has curdled my view of a broadcaster that’s supposed to reflect our values. Morally bankrupt and emotionally barren.
ABC
A magnitude-7.7 earthquake has struck Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, with the effects felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam.
A 30-storey skyscraper in Bangkok has collapsed, trapping 43 workers, police and medics say.
SBS
What if no one wins? What to know about minority government
Published 28 March 2025, 8:59 pm
While the campaign to win votes runs five weeks, some experts say we could end up with a minority government. So, what is a minority government, how would it work, and why is it predicted to be more likely this time around?
NEWS
‘SERIOUS PLANS’: Shock after Putin Greenland call
A European expert says that Russian President Vladimir Putin has given a nod to Trump’s plans to seize Greenland.
Fiancée’s vow to sleep with 1000 men
The OnlyFans star has explained how she intends to balance her ambitious career goals within her future marriage.
Annie Knight has earnt a name for herself as the most sexually active woman in Australia, she’s also just said ‘yes’ to forever with her best friend Henry Brayshaw, the son of popular sports commentator James Brayshaw, and is determined her engagement won’t have an effect on her career.
“This year I have set myself the goal of sleeping with 1000 men, and my engagement hasn’t changed that,” the 28-year-old OnlyFans star wrote in a lengthy first-person piece for Mamamia.
“Henry is super supportive, and he knows I would never give up work for anyone. He has no problem with what I’m doing and understands how ambitious I am.”
She went on to explain that the couple has boundaries in place, including the fact that she does not kiss people she films with, and is always open with Brayshaw about the details of her work.
THE NEW DAILY
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has dismissed election attacks from Labor as a “sledge-a-thon”, while rejecting claims his policies mirror those of US President Donald Trump.
Launching his campaign in his home city of Brisbane on Friday, Dutton said the Coalition had a positive plan while the government would run a scare campaign for the May 3 election.
MACRO BUSINESS
Australians would be wealthier with a smaller population
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
Rowan Dean: So it begins. The most important five weeks of our lives.
The Australia that is born on May 3rd will either be a recovering addict on the way to being healed or a crippled, mutant gasping its last.
That is up to all of us. The stakes in an election have never been higher. Only two figures need to be top of mind: the million-plus migrants and the trillion-dollar debt. Both figures can only get worse, far worse, if Labor is re-elected and the damage will be largely beyond repair. Both figures can be reversed and the damage halted if the Coalition is elected. That is the clear, stark unavoidable choice.
The Coalition is far from perfect, but Labor is beyond salvageable. Jim Chalmers’ fraudulent Budget offered literally nothing in the way of a plan forward or a means of revitalising our moribund economy.
A CURRENT AFFAIR
Unvaxxed cop still can't serve
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1PT9UhEi1R/
CRIKEY
It’s an election between parties that have forgotten themselves — and the national interest
Over recent years, Labor and the Liberals abandoned many of their traditions, almost to the point of swapping roles. The election is now a fight between amnesiacs.