Thread by @MsMariaT

@Channel4News Also recall, Christopher Wylie:

"Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Tells U.K. Lawmakers His Predecessor Was Poisoned" in

#Kenya #Cambridge Analytica:

time.com/5216680/cambri…

@Channel4News "Christopher Wylie... told Members of Parliament in the U.K. that he believes his predecessor at the firm [CambridgeAnalytica] was poisoned in a Kenyan hotel room after a deal went wrong."

#Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News "Wylie...had been told Muresan had been working on a political deal that soured, that Muresan had been poisoned, and that police had been bribed not to enter the hotel room."

#Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News "When I first met Nigel, he barely knew how to turn on a computer,” said Alexandra Phillips, who became Ukip’s head of media in 2013 and is now an MEP candidate for the Brexit party. "

Phillips being #BrexitParty MEP (at top) #Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

theguardian.com/politics/2019/…

@Channel4News Fuck these garbage #CambridgeAnalytica people, forever.

"In #Kenya, Election Manipulation Is a Matter of Life and Death"

thenation.com/article/in-ken…

@Channel4News "Targeted social-media advertisements, many containing dangerous ethnonationalist rhetoric, proliferated. Key terms on search engines like Google were manipulated so that the first result in a query for opposition candidate..."

#Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News "Hired by a wealthy Nigerian businessman who did not want the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, to lose, #CambridgeAnalytica adopted a toxic set of tactics..." #Kenya

@Channel4News “It was VOTER SUPRESSION of the most crude and basic kind,” said a former contractor retained by the firm. This meant ISLAMAPHOBIC ADS that threatened sharia law, violence, and anarchy across the country should presidential candidate...Buhari win."

#Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News " #CambridgeAnalytica staff confirmed that at one point the firm brought in ISRAELI HACKERS who had procured private information about Buhari, including health records and e-mails, in order to compromise his candidacy."

Have you caught the pattern, yet?

#Kenya

@Channel4News "Buhari won the election, but the skills #CambridgeAnalytica honed in 2015 could then be used elsewhere."

And they did.

@Channel4News "In Kenya the “Real Raila” campaign, owned and managed by a still unidentified group, used similar tactics in the lead-up to the 2017 election. In a series of short videos, the unnamed group labeled Odinga “Lord of war” and “Lord of poverty,” promising chaos in #Kenya..."

@Channel4News "Harris Media, a Texas corporation, was identified as the source of this video. Several more circulated online, particularly on the messaging service WhatsApp, owned by Facebook."

#CambridgeAnalytica

@JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito Harris Media was in #Kenya, too, of course.

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "We put info into the bloodstream of the Internet and then watch it grow,” Turnbull told the Channel 4 reporters in the secretly recorded video. In #Kenya, that “growth” meant that an already fraught election was underscored by intense ethnic polarization."

#CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "...This targeted advertising turns political conversations insular and heated, makes it easier to disseminate misinformation, and poisons the political discourse."

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "Anecdotally, a friend—highly educated, middle class—once told me she was genuinely afraid of an Odinga victory, because she thought he was determined to massacre her ethnic group, based entirely on info that SHE HAD SEEN ONLINE."

SOUND FAMILIAR?

#Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "This hints at another piece of the problem: The data mined by #CambridgeAnalytica allows the firm to target its message to small groups of people so that we are not all consuming the same information." #Kenya

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "The most accessible metric of the impact of this campaigning is that in Kenya in 2017, OVER 100 PEOPLE DIED IN ELECTION RELATED VIOLENCE. But there are intangible yet perceptible consequences, too. The political discourse in #Kenya has shifted for the worse"

#CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "Many voters were DISENFRANCHISED by the flawed election. Between the nullified August poll and the October rerun ordered by the Kenyan Supreme Court, VOTER TURNOUT DROPPED FROM 79 PERCENT TO 38. "

#CambridgeAnalytica #Kenya

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito " #CambridgeAnalytica, of course, did not invent this type of political consulting. The lobbying and political-consultancy firm led by Paul #Manafort...had served authoritarian regimes in Nigeria, #Kenya, Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, and Somalia, among other places. "

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "Manafort and his associates were instrumental in rebranding Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan guerrilla leader, as an anti-communist fighter, securing US military aid for him, and essentially delaying an end to the brutal civil war in #Angola."

More here:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/957690062631616512

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "A 1992 report by the Center for Public Integrity estimated that Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly—the firm Manafort was part of—made $3.3 million from what the report described as “the torturers’ lobby.”

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito "...investigations into #ErikPrince, former CEO of the now defunct Blackwater security empire, revealed his new firm’s involvement in the conflict in South Sudan, including an attempt to arm an agricultural plane in breach of international law."

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito AHEM: "Last yr, Bell Pottinger, the powerful London public-relations firm, shut down after it emerged that it had engineered a campaign to STOKE RACIAL TENSIONS in So Africa TO DISTRACT FROM QUERIES OVER CORRUPTION..."

@OversightDems @HouseDemocrats

thenation.com/article/in-ken…

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito @OversightDems @HouseDemocrats "Amoral political interference in Africa is pervasive and as old as the relationship between Africa and the West. African lives continue to mean little in the pursuit of profit. "

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito @OversightDems @HouseDemocrats "The key difference in this case is the nexus with technology, which, without precise and carefully crafted oversight, replicates and exacerbates the biases and behavior that exists offline."

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito @OversightDems @HouseDemocrats "None of this absolves the African leaders who contract with these firms to do their dirty work. Politicians choose to spend money on these “consultants” and spin doctors. The companies heighten rhetoric that already exists."

You mean, LIKE TRUMP?

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito @OversightDems @HouseDemocrats "...many of the cast of characters who poisoned the waters in 2013 and 2017 have merely changed business cards—Erik Prince and Alexander Nix are now colleagues at a new political-consulting and data-analytics firm, Emerdata. The stakes will be higher."

#Kenya #CambridgeAnalytica

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito @OversightDems @HouseDemocrats Excerpts only; to view full article by @Nanjala1 link here:

"In #Kenya, Election Manipulation Is a Matter of Life and Death

Social media amplifiy the threat posed by #CambridgeAnalytica and the rest of Africa’s secretive political-consulting industry."

thenation.com/article/in-ken…

@Channel4News @JamesFourM @emlas @ninaandtito @OversightDems @HouseDemocrats @Nanjala1 <eot> ✌️