In 1993, the United Kingdom granted asylum to a couple named Ramadan Abedi and Samia Tabbal, who claimed they had faced persecution in their home country of Libya. A year later, the couple welcomed a baby boy they named Salman. Twenty three years later, Salman Abedi walked into Manchester Arena during an Ariana Grande concert and detonated a bomb he wore in a backpack filled with nuts and bolts to act as shrapnel. He murdered 22 concert goers and wounded more than a thousand of them.
A History Of Mind Control To Limit Anger About It
Two weeks later, there was a benefit concert held for the victims of the bombing, which included Chris Martin singing the Oasis hit "Don't Look Back In Anger", which was released when Ariana Grande was three years old. You can see the video of this below: note the lyrics projected in giant font in the background, since most of Ariana Grande's fans were too young to remember or weren't even born when the song came out.
The concert coincided with a social media campaign including Twitter hashtags and the rest. This was apparently part of a "mind control" plan by the British government, one that started prior to the 2012 Olympics in Britain and continues to this day. This was described in an article in Middle East Eye in 2019, an article that went viral last week in the wake of the latest terrorist atrocity in England.
Another Atrocity, More Calls For Tolerance
Last Tuesday, a West African migrant stabbed three Britons to death in Nottingham, before running over others with a van. In response, the mothers of the two young victims gave speeches essentially saying, "Don't look back in anger", but by this time the Middle East Eye article had begun to spread, causing some observers to cast a jaundiced eye on the proceedings.
Like both of these mothers said basically the same thing, using nearly the same words, 24 hours after their children were stabbed to death. https://t.co/XZEcAXJgHX
— Upstate Federalist (@upstatefederlst) June 17, 2023
Below is an excerpt from the Middle East Eye article that puts these post-terrorism kumbaya moments in a different light. Following that, we'll close with an investing note as a palate cleanser.
The British government has prepared for terrorist incidents by pre-planning social media campaigns which are designed to appear to be a spontaneous public response to attacks, Middle East Eye has learned.
Hashtags are carefully tested before attacks happen, Instagram images selected, and “impromptu” street posters are printed.
In operations that contingency planners term “controlled spontaneity”, politicians’ statements, vigils and inter-faith events are also negotiated and planned in readiness for any terrorist attack.
Some strategies had been devised in 2011, when social media platforms were aiding communication between protesters during the Arab Spring – and when a series of riots were erupting across English towns and cities that summer.
One senior figure involved in that contingency planning told MEE that the riots “absolutely terrified” the British government, and that Theresa May, who was then home secretary and is now prime minister, had been particularly shaken.
The measures drawn up in advance of the Olympics were intended to “corral the Princess Dianaesque grief” that was expected to emerge after any mass-casualty attack - a reference to the public mourning that followed the death of the royal in a car crash in 1997. This person describes those measures candidly as an attempt at “mind control”.
[...]
‘We’re sending you a hundred imams’
Although covert messaging developed as part of the Prevent programme is aimed at Muslims, particularly young men, plans for “controlled spontaneity” following a terrorist attack are targeted at the wider population.
The day after the London Bridge attack, a team of men arrived at the scene of the murders in an unmarked van.
They were admitted behind the police cordon, before plastering walls with posters bearing images of London and hashtags that were already circulating on Twitter, including #TurnToLove, #ForLondon and #LoveWillWin.
This practice, known in the UK as fly-posting, is a minor criminal offence, but police allowed the members of the fly-posting team behind their cordon and took no action. The men doing this work declined to tell journalists who they were, or where they were from.
When the cordon was eventually lifted and the public were able to return to the scene of the attacks, they found themselves surrounded by apparently impromptu signs of public defiance and unity.
It's understandable that the British government wouldn't want terrorist acts to lead to vigilante reprisals, but maybe rethinking its immigration policy would be a more healthy response to these atrocities than "don't look back in anger". Sometimes anger is necessary for change.
Below is our promised palate-cleanser, another example of how small investors can generate decent returns while limiting risk.
Another Win For Small Investors
In post last month (Bud Light's No-Win Scenario), we mentioned this kind of result. Here's a more recent example of it. The hedged portfolio construction algorithm on the Portfolio Armor website built this portfolio last December for a small investor unwilling to risk a decline of more than 13% over the next six months.
The main two positions there were the Crocs (CROX) and Super Micro Computer (SMCI). The algorithm started with equal dollar amounts of both, and then rounded down to get round lots of each. Then it used a tightly collared position in the Canadian Solar (CSIQ) to absorb some of the leftover cash.
Portfolio Armor's algorithm estimated an expected return of 7% for the portfolio, as you can see in the bottom right of the screen capture above. Here's how it actually did.
The portfolio was up 13.66% as of Friday's close, while SPY was up 11.28% over the same time period. The algorithm exited the SMCI position on May 19th, because that's when the hedge expired on that stock. You can find an interactive version of the chart above here.
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