Westminstenders: Exit 2020 Vision

[RedToothBrush]

Yet it is a great mistake to suppose that the only writers who matter are those whom the educated in their saner moments can take seriously. There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and the superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, capturers and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history.
Norm Cohn ‘Warrant for Genocide’ 1970

(As referenced by Nick Cohen).

We have a deal (or bits of a deal). Bino til Dec 2020. Then the cliff?

Still a long way to go. It sounds better than it could be. But worse than it initially seems.

Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
To be clear, @facebook was trying to "secure evidence" ahead of the UK authorities. Nice try, @facebook. The UK Information Commissioner's Office cracking whip...British legal investigation MUST take precedence over US multibillion $ company..

imo, European Commission gearing up for an enquiry, likely to issue a massive fine to FB once evidence has been assembled

The EC will be totally pissed off because CA may have swung more than 2% of voters, i.e. the Brexit result

John Crace: "Green is now the new red"
Yes, all those UK red lines turned green, with probably more to come

It would have been so much more dignified to accept the inevitable at the start, be generous to expats
and then work full out on getting the best EEA / EFTA terms - e.g. bolting on services and protecting the fishing industry

Sadly, I'm will Red on this CA/Facebook stuff, I don't think it'll make any difference 're Brexit, just like Putin's interference was brushed aside.

Kevin Beaumont, Esquire @GossiTheDog

Breaking: Channel 4 just announced they’re airing another undercover film tomorrow where Cambridge Analytica say they won the election for Donald Trump and describe how. This is a car crash airing live on TV. Journalism matters.

The EC will be totally pissed off because CA may have swung more than 2% of voters, i.e. the Brexit result
What's puzzling is the EU is staying very very silent on the constitutional irregularities of the actual triggering of @50, as well as the irregularities in the funding of the Leave campaign, never mind this one.
I can only hope they are biding their time till an opportune moment.

Dutch tweet:
De beer gaat nu echt los in de UK...The bear is now really loose in the UK...

Actually I wonder if the EU courts would have something to say about .CA interference and will have any power. That's of course if wrong doing can be proved. I wounder if Best for Britain" will take up a case.

Mother

But the BBC is only mentioning a possible link to the US election. So the DUP paid CA £33,000 simply to influence the US election. Definitely nothing to do with Brexit, no sirree. And if it was only the US election, I'm sure Müller is already well on the case, so why should the UK Information Commissioner want to get a peek at CA's servers?

There's a lot more to come from this and it's a lot closer to home.

Goodness me, just had a quick look at what people are saying on the Mail Online (I know, I'll be having a scrub down in a minute). Seems all the Kippers and ardent Brexiteers are pinning all the blame on May and the "spineless" Tories, saying they'll never vote tory again (yeah, yeah). How quickly things change, eh? Whatever happened to strong and stable Treeza?

Just plaice matting which seems appropriate with all the fish flinging going on.

Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak
And this is really interesting - Facebook security boss reported to be on his way out
<a class="break-all" href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-stamos.html?referer=t.co/XuzO7PuE7A?amp=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-stamos.html?referer=t.co/XuzO7PuE7A?amp=1
Facebook Security Chief Said to Leave After Clashes Over Disinformation

Nix is digging himself deeper...

This is an amazing story - and equally amazing is how easily CA facilitated it in the hope of a few Sri Lankan rupees. Stunning - almost pathological - cynicism matched only by stunning naivety/hubris.

Go away and shut up.

red Stunning; yes lala Nix is good value: 'philanthropic venture' in Sri Lanka. What a gent.

Helena Lee @BBCHelenaLee
Tuesday’s The Times: “British firm sends ‘girls’ to entrap politicians” #tomorrowspaperstoday

To the point...

Thank you, Red. Marking place. Cannot really keep up with whether it's BINO/cliff/EEA/Canada...

Exhausting.

Excellent work bbc

Jon Snow
Jon Snow
@jonsnowC4
Cambridge Analytica's Mr Nix fails to address any of our findings about what his company has been doing with our Facebook profiles - Not least because he insisted on being interviewed by the BBC Before our report had aired..hence none of our findings were put to him!!

Thread from 6th Dec retweeted tonight by Sarah Kendzior and Peter Jukes is aging well...

Peter Jukes @ peterjukes

1. The effect of Mercer funding - of both Young Americas Foundation and Young Britons foundation - shows the three pronged strategy of Steve Bannon's influence on both #Brexit and #Trump"
2. The first strategy is the Tea Party style insurrection from the right. (Kassam and Farage were inspired to invent their own British Tea Party until they realised that it was a rebellion against the Brits)
3. Just like the Tea Party in the US, the YBF and Conservative Way Forward organised its own slate of councillors, aldermen and MPs which it lavished with attention, online dirty tricks and activism
4. This was aided by endless spuriously funded Astro turfed campaigns and think tanks both sides of the Atlantic, and a dedication to trolling new media outlets like Breitbart or Fawkes.
5. Students of course were a key target, and they were leveraged - as we say in the Tory bullying scandal - to provide incentives for middle aged MPs, and plenty of Kompromat
6. But the other key tactic, apart from entryism, was a divide and rule attitude to other splitting up parties. The Republicans greatest fear was Trump running as a independent. In the UK, it became UKIP
7. Key members of the YBF went over to UKIP, including Raheem Kassam and Matt Richardson, around 2013, after Bannon attended the 10th YBF anniversary
8. This disruptive right flank attack was well thought out, and clearly approved of by key members who stayed within the Conservative Party, like Matt Elliott. It gave YBF alumni a classic pincer movement on moderate Tories.
9. And just as Trump is 'talking' to Putin during the Miss Universe contest in 2013, so too many YBF members make visits to Moscow, often via the Conservative Friends of Russia group, closed down because of espionage concerns

10. With many of the YBF execs - particularly Matt Richardson and Matt Elliott - there was an early realisation fo the power of digital campaigning around this time or earlier. 11. And this is where things really converge, quite apart from the Bannon/Kassam/Farage love in. The use of Cambridge Analytica, the Mercer owned electoral machine, which included Bannon and Flynn as advisors 12. Despite ostensibly belonging to different parties Richardson to UKIP and Elliott to the Conservatives): despite helping to run different campaigns, Vote Leave and Leave EU, both Matt's used the services of Cambridge Analytica or its subsidiaries 13. So the first two prongs, entryism and 'splitting', from these Mercer backed groups, are finally turbo charged with Breitbart propaganda combined with weaponised dark ads from Mercer's analytics firm 14. So the much vaunted antipathy between Vote Leave and Leave.EU is surface only: they have the same mentors, funders, personnel, dark money and digital campaigning. They were the same project all along. 15. Two things remain unclear to date: why was Cambridge Analytica repeatedly offering help to Julian Assange over Russian hacked emails? And how deep do those Russian connections go with #Brexit? 16. However, there's little doubt that the Russian colonisation of UKIP really does begin soon after Farage becomes friends with Bannon in 2012 who then recruits Kassam to Breitbart 17. First there was the research work by 'dissident' Pavel Stroilov, the mysterious Zatutliviter case involving Arron Banks Russian wife, the expelled 'agent' Sergey Nalodin, and finally, in 2013 - Farage meets Ambassador Yakovenko, and gets regular RT spots 18. It's around then in 2013 Farage goes in to full Putin fan boy mode. But why? What was the quid pro quo? 19. But for all the Putinophilia, don't forget the real origin of this: Farage's friendship with Bannon - a man he admired so much he gave Bannon a painting depicting him as Napoleon 20. The other Russia connections, like Dana Rohrabacher, prove the wider point. This whole scandal is created by the alliance between dark money in both US and Russia 21. Sometimes there's an ideological alliance over 'nationism' or white supremacy, climate change, gun control, illiberalism or libertarianism, but two things never change in this YAF/YBF spawned takeover of classic conservatism. 22. Dark money and deep data - these two consistent threads which link back to Mercer's RenTech: and even to former YBF President Dan Hannan's praise for the 'blue eye sheikhs' of Iceland banking before the crash. 23. And paradoxically - by following the data and the money - US law enforcement is wrapping up and neutralising a large part of this network. However, no one has begun this process in the UK.

Now it’s leading story on the BBC website:

The UK's Information Commissioner says she will seek a warrant to look at the databases and servers used by British firm Cambridge Analytica. The company is accused of using the personal data of 50 million Facebook members to influence the US presidential election in 2016. Its executives have also been filmed by Channel 4 News suggesting it could use honey traps and potentially bribery to discredit politicians.

The company denies any wrongdoing.

Alex Stamos
@alexstamos
Despite the rumors, I'm still fully engaged with my work at Facebook. It's true that my role did change. I'm currently spending more time exploring emerging security risks and working on election security.

So the DUP paid CA £33,000 simply to influence the US election.

It's chickenfeed in the context of an American election, but if true we can look forward to a revival of Noraid.