Share this page!

The Citizens Profile picture
Twitter logo
Feb 8 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
🚨: Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies and Mark Zuckerberg's first outside investor is stepping down from the board of Facebook parent company Meta:
theguardian.com/technology/202…
It was Thiel who gave Mark Zuckerberg his first outside investment of $500,000 in 2004, and has sat on the board of the company for 17 years.
The major Trump donor says that he's retiring from the role to "build his political career", and focus on the US midterm elections.

Since his public support of Trump and 2016 role in the transition team, Thiel has continued to donate to Republicans...
businessinsider.in/tech/news/pete…
After giving $1.25m to Trump's campaign, followed by a further $250,000 to the Trump Victory PAC, Thiel has been busying himself backing further senate candidates, in a bid to tip the 50-50 split in favour of those sympathetic to his libertarian agenda.
Image
In 2021 he gave two large $10m donations to a couple of Trump-aligned PACs representing "protégés" of his:

Venture Capitalist and 'Hillbilly Elegy' / 'Beyond Libertarianism' author J.D Vance, running in Ohio:
independent.co.uk/voices/hillbil… Image
and long-term ally Blake Masters, President of the Thiel Foundation, outspoken supporter of the 'America First' movement, and co-author, along with Thiel, of the book 'Zero to One'.

Masters is running in Arizona:
wired.com/story/the-libe…
Masters had previously been a relatively unknown political entity until Thiel's funding

Kirk Adams, Arizona House speaker, stated after his bankrolling that "before people didn't really have any metric to judge his prospective candidacy, but now they do"
politico.com/news/2021/05/1…
Both Vance and Masters have been noted for promoting far-right ideology, criticism also levelled at Thiel, who's company Palantir is infamous for its role in the detention of migrants at the US border, and alleged involvement with Cambridge Analytica…
tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/0… Image
The CA scandal, which implicated both Facebook and Palantir, are far from the only instances of data-misuse encouraged by Thiel, who was reportedly behind a push not to fact-check politicians on FB and has invested in multiple ethically dubious ventures:
The move from Thiel comes shortly after Facebook owner 'Meta' announced its biggest ever stock market loss and decline in daily active users, as customers reject the platform in favour of rivals:
bbc.co.uk/news/business-…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with The Citizens

The Citizens Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @allthecitizens

The Citizens Profile picture
Feb 10
🚨New: As a potential Conservative challenge looms, research from @BylineBITE and @allthecitizens finds that the three top contenders for the job have, between them, accepted £78,500 from Russian political donors since 2015. THREAD: Image
Using information compiled by @allthecitizens, @BylineTimes reports that 3 leadership frontrunners; Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, and Jeremy Hunt, have received nearly £80k in this time, while the Conservatives have accepted over £1.9m since Johnson took power.
First, Jeremy Hunt - 2nd in the Tories’ last leadership race, has received the most, taking £72,500 from energy company Aquind, who’s director, Alexander Temerko, is the former head of a Russian state-owned arms firm, and close friend of Boris Johnson.
reuters.com/investigates/s…
Read 11 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
Feb 9
🚨NEW 🚨
@allthecitizens have covered in depth the appalling treatment of Nepali workers at Supermax, a glove manufacturer awarded NHS contracts despite claims of forced labour.

In this must-read piece for @guardian, our @McCoolingtons gives them a voice

theguardian.com/global-develop…
@guardian @McCoolingtons “It’s not fair,” says Saroj*, 27. “Instead of supporting these Malaysian companies, the UK should support workers who say they have been abused in the past and are being abused currently.” Image
@guardian @McCoolingtons "According to a 2017 report by Amnesty International, many Nepali migrant workers become “trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and exploitation”, with two-thirds of those surveyed paying excessive or illegal recruitment fees" Image
Read 5 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
Feb 8
🔴 The Judicial Review & Courts Bill went through a 2nd reading in the House of Lords last night.

In a powerful speech Baroness Chakrabarti set out why the bill is yet another 'attack on the rule of law from a govt neither conservative nor liberal in its instincts'

👇👇🔥🔥🧵
Judicial Review is the mechanism by which courts can hold the govt & public bodies to account, ensuring the lawful exercise of power

‘It exists to level the playing field between citizens & state’: Shami Chakrabarti

judiciary.uk/you-and-the-ju…
Proposed changes to Judicial Review will potentially ‘weaken judicial discretion, deny remedy to those affected by unlawful acts & have a chilling effect on judicial review’ says @TheLawSociety

lawsociety.org.uk/topics/human-r…
Read 7 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
Feb 8
Boris Johnson is facing fresh calls from some of his own MPs to apologise for making a false claim about Sir Keir Starmer, after protesters surrounded the Labour leader near Parliament. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
Lies have real consequences
Embarrassing. Unacceptable.
Read 4 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
Feb 7
🚨NEW 🚨Welcome to Eaton Square - the oligarchs' favourite address in the money laundering capital of the world

Watch @OliverBullough explain how Russian money & the #LondonLaundromat threaten our security, our democracy and our power to intervene in global affairs 🇷🇺🇬🇧👇👇
When Boris Johnson threatens Russia with sanctions, Putin laughs at us.

Why? Because he knows 🇬🇧 & the Tories are knee-deep in Russian money.

And you can't sanction something if you don't know where it is, says journalist and author @OliverBullough 👇👇
Big thanks to @OliverBullough whose book Moneyland shone a light into the murky world of money laundering. More to come soon with 'Butler to the World', an eye-opening analysis of Britain's role as servant to kleptocrats, criminals, tax dodgers & tycoons
waterstones.com/book/butler-to…
Read 8 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
Feb 4
🚨NEW: Last week the UK Health and Security Agency published contracts for the purchase of Lateral Flow Tests (LFTs) worth £980 million.

Those contracts follow a shortage of LFTs in December as cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 spiked. @BylineBITE / @allthecitizens 🧵
The majority of the contracts were given to INNOVA MEDICAL GROUP, a US-based company who have been the primary supplier of LFTs to the UK since the start of the pandemic.
The company who has won the most in pandemic-related contracts from the UK government, Innova won £752 million in LFT contracts on December 17. The largest of these was for £322 million. So far, INNOVA have won at least £4.3 billion in UK contracts for Lateral Flow Tests.
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @allthecitizens has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @allthecitizens!

Read all threads by @allthecitizens

:(