Covering one’s tracks, pointing fingers towards the East, gullible readers …
Revealed: how US billionaire helped to back Brexit | The Guardian |
The US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency played a key role in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the Observer has learned.
It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission.
Callahan, the author of Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America (2010), created Inside Philanthropy in 2013 to help fill this gap. (The Chronicle of Philanthropy is another valuable resource.) The site offers a rich storehouse of information about the causes to which the wealthy give. An entry on Robert Mercer, for instance, notes that he is the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies (a hedge fund) and a leading contributor to Super PACs, and that his family foundation backs a sprawling array of conservative institutions, including the Media Research Center, which scans the media for liberal bias; the George W. Bush Foundation, which supports the Bush library and museum; and the Heartland Institute, a leading promoter of climate-change denial.
[Source: How to Cover the One Percent | NY Books | ]Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years’ experience in military disinformation campaigns and “election management”, claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers. Trump’s team paid the firm more than $6m (£4.8m) to target swing voters, and it has now emerged that Mercer also introduced the firm – in which he has a major stake – to Farage.
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The UK Brexit gang behind Nigel Farage ... and Donald Trump (Photo: Daily Mail)The communications director of Leave.eu, Andy Wigmore, told the Observer that the longstanding friendship between Nigel Farage and the Mercer family led Mercer to offer his help – free – to the Brexit campaign because of their shared goals.
One really doesn’t read the future using an orbuculum or Crystal Ball …
Trump on Brexit: America is next | CNN News – June 25, 2016 |
British voters just shattered political convention in a stunning repudiation of the ruling establishment. Donald Trump is betting America is about to do the same.
Voters in the UK did more than reject the European Union and topple their pro-EU Prime Minister David Cameron in a referendum Thursday.
They also set off a cascade of events that could spark global economic chaos, remake the Western world, reverberate through November’s presidential election and challenge U.S. security for years to come.
At Trump news conference, it’s all about himThe referendum campaign — just like the U.S. election — has boiled with populist anger, fear-mongering by politicians, hostility towards distant political elites and resurgent nationalism, and exposed a visceral feeling in the electorate that ordinary voters have lost control of the politics that shape their own lives. Its success raises the question of whether those forces will exert a similar influence in America in November.
From Robert Mercer and Ted Cruz is such a small step to Chris Steele of MI6 infamy … spooks and British oligarchs! Nothin here to see … ask Rupert Murdoch or Robert Maxwell. Does Unit 8200 mean anything to you? Ask Iran about cyber warfare and Stuxnet, or building the largest NSA center in Idaho, a piece of the Egyptian Arab Spring anyone (?) or perhaps pointing fingers after the Ghouta false flag attack near Damascus. Netanyahu did like Mitt Romney and our 11 moves chess player didn’t like Bibi and Sara very much in the 2015 Israeli general election. Some tit for tat anyone? Yeah, looking towards the Kremlin … Bibi holding hands with Vladimir. Clear joined interests, or not! Clearly improving results in 2016 over 2012.
OK I agree, put blame on Glenn Greenwald for Snowden being stranded in Moscow. No right-wing conspiracy here to see after all. Did Israel’s military whizz kids play a role in Georgia, Saakashvili, South Ossetia or the Rose Revolution?
Throwing off the blood hounds, a bit more faked news and leading on to Putin’s Russia …
The Trump campaign has hired Ted Cruz’s former data-analysis firm, Cambridge Analytica–and in doing so, it has connected itself with a British property tycoon, Vincent Tchenguiz, and through him with the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a business associate of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who resigned last week. It would be hard to find a better example of why the ownership of the companies that collect data on the American electorate matters.
What Cambridge does is what marketers have done for some time now: segment potential customers (in this case, voters) by their buying habits, lifestyle, and psychology. It most famously worked on the “Leave.” campaign during Brexit voting in the United Kingdom.
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Collage of the bad guys linked in an evil network (Credit: TabletMag)Cambridge Analytica’s British parent company, SCL, has attracted criticism for some unusual strategies, such as trying to persuade opposition supporters not to vote in a Nigerian election, using the influence of “local religious figures.”
Just never, never Cruz.
Didn’t rain today. Putin must have stopped the rain.
Gareth Porter’s review of the Democrats’ Putin-Russia excuse is excellent. How `New Cold Warriors’ Cornered Trump
It turns out to be possible that Hillary Clinton ran an awful campaign at the same time that Russian hacking, apparently coordinated with the brave folks at Wikileaks, was going on. It’s not an either/or proposition.
While I wouldn’t demonize Russia for interfering in a US election as turnabout is always fair, a) not buying that the Russian state had anything to do with the DNC/Podesta hacks and b) evidence that the release of those communications was a factor in Trump carrying PA, MI, or WI is lacking. IA and OH were gone, and by a large margin, before either of those hacked emails were in the public domain. Democrats keep overlooking that their excuse isn’t a matter of a single yes/no. If those email were not a factor in the election, then “what difference does it make” if the Russian state was the hacker?
After seventy years of virulent anti-Russian propaganda in the US, rural people are the least likely to have any kindly feelings towards Russia. But they may have gotten a clue that seventy years and trillions of dollars spent by the Pentagon and intel agencies has meant that development hasn’t flown their way.
The title of this diary led me to believe you were going to offer a rebuttal of claims about Putin and Brexit. I didn’t see that. I did see stuff about Georgia and Nigeria and Egypt and Israel and Ted Cruz and Edward Snowden and….
Why not comment in Booman’s posts about Putin? It would (no sarcasm here) be interesting to read the resulting back-and-forth between you and him.
I have great respect for Martin Longman from the time he wrote at Daily Kos. As soon as he founded his own blog, I followed him here to the Pond – user #450 or something like that (Spring 2005). With other great writers the European affiliated blog was started by Martin.
Due to policing and even a blog death threat, I left DK (was banned once and reinstated) to permanently reside here @BooMan Tribune. Martin has always been open to diverse views. A handful of present members not so. I refuse to be scorned and humiliated for my views. As long as I have the respect of Martin, I will keep blogging from Europe, looking from the outside INward.
On foreign policy, U.S. Congress can not be seen as a representation of We The People. The Supreme Court ruling established corporations are people too. Corporations have through fierce lobbying been the main factor for decisions on foreign policy. President Obama’s hands were tied. Just follow the itineries of FP idiots like John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Ukraine, Georgia, northern Syria [talks with jihadist head choppers], and Jerusalem to undermine the President’s policy.
Martin looks at foreign policy and its effects from inside OUTwards. On essential issues, our vision and analysis differ quite a bit. I’m comfortable to write my articles and views in diaries.