Solidarity is not only required by the values of the union but its also in the common interest more of whats happening in spain now with months ahead or in madrid. People are blaming the government because they didnt take action before hand because everybody knew what was going on we had the example of china we had eternally and they knew they didnt. They didnt prevent all of all of this coming so regional regional governments are responsible of all those that protective equipment for for Health Care Workers and for poor Family Police officers test kits and everything and theyre being delayed to come to to a country so we dont know we dont really know whats going to happen next people are concerned this last weekend we had many people taking their cars and going out for the cook to the cold storage going to the 2nd homes but these wiccan yesterday there was so on the television the restrictions on the police have reported that there were less people going out or taking the cars so i get i guess people with these figures that have been released today are who is saying it 10832 more. People have died in the past 24 hours people are more concerned and more concerned so i see people not moving around so much madrid being the epicenter or the ground 0 of the whole pandemic cannot cope anymore with the corpse of all that all of that bodies all the people have died that have died and the municipal funeral Funeral Company had to had to open an ice rink to to take their all the people that have died but the kind of hope there are any more and they have a range to set that set up everything in in in madrid scored so this situation is quite critical right now. New figures out of iran show the death toll rising past 2 and a half 1000 more than 3000 new infections as well bringing the total number of cases up to around 35000 irans president has been reassuring people the crisis will end soon and that the health care and Health System is ready to handle the strain of the outbreak. The us president signed a 2. 00 trillion dollars aid package to help people and businesses cope with the effects of the pandemic america does have the highest number of cases worldwide with more than 100000. 00 people infected interestingly chinas began easing its restrictions on the 11000000 people in holland where the outbreak was 1st reported back in december people are now allowed to enter the city thats been under lockdown for more than 2 months and. First of all it makes me very happy to see my family like my mother said we wanted to hurt but know its a special period so we cant hope to make any actions like although the epidemic situation in china has taken a turn for the better has not been completely destroyed from the route police in south africa have been struggling to enforce a 21 day nationwide lockdown which came into force friday midnight people are only allowed out of their homes to buy groceries or for Health Emergencies but large crowds have been gathering in the poor townships with social distancing is almost impossible because of the cramped Living Conditions. Some other news for you voters in guinea have overwhelmingly back to new constitution which paves the way for president alpha conde to stay in power for another 12 years opposition leaders boycotted sudans referendum that was delayed after observers raised concerns about the impartiality referendum led to months of violent protests in the killing of at least 32 people on polling day and dozens of people have been killed in fighting between rival forces near the libyan city of sirte the internationally recognized government of National Accord says at least 45 is loyal to the ward cleaver hafter and 23 of its own soldiers have died in violence resumed this week after a recent. The go youre up to date with the headlines on aljazeera studio b. Unscripted from london hes next. Thank. You why are journalists under attack because democracy is under attack and i realized i was working for something that was evil and i had been a part of actually creating it when Mark Zuckerberg essentially said that it is ok for politicians to lie that spells doom. My name is maria ressa and im a journalist and also the message that the government is sending is very clear be silent or your next i have received thousands of Death Threats on line. Thank you im Christopher Wiley im a Data Scientist but most people know me as the Cambridge Analytical whistleblower thanks but knew about Cambridge Analytical scheme since 2015 before the story broke facebook threatened to sue the guardian and then banned me for whistleblowing are revealed hard data is being manipulated to political gain without our consent thanks since rappler started reporting the president protect us that he drugged her i believe that she did leave charged and arrested if it makes you feel vulnerable but i think its quite right. Im inspired by how maria continues to stand up for the truth in the face of real danger. Chrysis revelations led to the largest danger Crime Investigation in history if we allow cheating in our democratic her thighs and we allow this amount what about next time what about the time after that we know firsthand what happens when social media is weaponize and the danger it now poses to our democracy. These around the world this is an existential moment and its time for us all to. Thank you so good to talk to you you figured out and then you created a system you taught yourself how to code you learned the data and then you built this whole system that was very efficient at modify behavior and then you decided to take it down when did you decide it was wrong when i 1st joined the company that later became Cambridge Analytic a c l group i joined a company that at the time was working on projects that were geared towards countered stream is an encounter radicalisation looking at how extremism spreads online and we got discovered by a guy by the name of steve bannon who won 3 short got a billionaire to acquire the company and what i saw was that. I had worked on a system that got essentially inverted to radicalize young men in the United States and you know witnessing the inception of an insurgency the campaign and so when i started seeing videos of people in focus groups who were so angry with things that were frankly untrue you know i realized i was working for something that was evil and i had you know been a part of actually creating it and i couldnt keep doing that its interesting when you said you were looking at it for a counter radicalisation at 1st i just. I came to it because. I was looking at how social Network Analysis spread the ideology of terrorism and we created rappler because if you can convince people to blow themselves up with this radical ideology why couldnt you have some things that are for good right thats why we created rappler but then when you started seeing the negative parts its hard to pull yourself out how to be a whistleblower what gave you the courage to do that yeah i think it was for me. You know growing up kind of as an outsider i was partly in a wheelchair when i was growing up because of a invisible disability and then i live on top of that sort of being queer i came out as a with the war but ive been coming out for my entire life and you know for me its that sense of otherness that and comfortable with being uncomfortable yeah that i think gave me a little bit of a notch to help me become become a whistleblower. But with setting up rappler and you know being on the outside i think youre going out there every single day pissing off a lot of people trying to. Do you find that you know your lifes journey sort of influences that oh gosh so i was born in the philippines and then moved to the United States when martial law is declared in 1972 but when i was with americans i never felt completely american and when im filled with for the peanos i dont feel completely filipino either so i guess its that its that otherness part of it right and that thats good training for journalists. Or whistle blowing or whistle blowing but i mean i do find that theres a bit of an overlap because not that i would ever call myself a journalist. But in some senses i feel similar theres something similar about that you know shoving uncomfortable information into peoples faces and annoying you have to Pay Attention to this and then. Feeling the consequences of that so i was going say thats the mission of journalism right you speak truth to power and youll know power doesnt like that. In your and i think you been speaking truth i mean theres a cost to yourself but you also seem to learn something more from each instance that youve done that has this been a good experience or a bad experience its a mixed bag i guess i mean i think its been on the whole a good experience for i have learned a lot. So how you know. You know after watching 2016 happen. And knowing so many things about what was going on. You know i learned i do feel compelled to speak uncomfortable truths. But at the same time you know. You know getting called to testify our congress you know as a 20 something game or living in london its not something that you really expects to be part of your life journey that was pretty intimidating is pretty intimidating to have you know the department of justice and f. B. I. Sitting behind me and giving me a subpoena after that. But i think i think on the whole its been a good experience because if you think back before 28 seen the idea of privacy or Data Protection you know the internet would be a mainstream political issue in the 2020 election and the primary ways would kind of be laughable so i feel like at least in that sense exposing wrongdoing and exposing the structures that facilitate and support that wrongdoing with Companies Like facebook yet have at least opened up an awareness into a conversation in our mainstream political discourse that i think is. Productive how easy is it to manipulate mass and im asking you i get frustrated a lot by the current sort of discussion about the election manipulation because it so focuses on the United States and to a slightly lesser extent britain. Because britain and the United States and im sure coming from the philippines you know this full well have been manipulating elections and democracy around the world for hundreds of years britain was a empire a speck in the eyes or you know the reason why you know the national drink in britain is tea and you know National Animal is a lion and you know these are not natural things here. And so i think the reason why people are so upset in the United States or in britain or other parts of europe is an American Voter now understands what it feels like to be an african voter because you know living in a country where youve got a gradually eroding. Information system where lies are everywhere where you dont know what to trust youve got Foreign Countries left right and center trying to manipulate you trick you deceive you and corruption rife in the administration looking at the philippines and something that id be interested in hearing your thoughts on coming from an x. U. S. Colony where you had a large country dictating the terms of how Government Works if you know to becoming independent and now having a large American Corporation run by a bunch of. Straight white dudes in america starting to influence at least what information is allowed or not allowed to exist or what gets amplified and promoted or what does thing in the philippines do you do you feel like there is a sort of. Neocolonialism happening online so youre the 1st person i heard say the colonialism never died it just moved on line right and i think in we talked about facebook as a 1st level which i mean frankly the collapse that roshan of our institutions began on facebook. What the description of the philippines Stanley Karnow wrote in our image and he described the philippines as a country that spent 450 years in a convent and 50 years in hollywood we were colonized by spain and then the United States and i think its ironic that the country that gave democracy is also the the place where Silicon Valley then has given someone like to tear down a bull scenario hes types of authoritarian. Leaders who work who are killing democracy the power to do it to manipulate people but i think we all know that the our countries in the global south bear the brunt of all the tech this issue and that have been made right i mean how do we get power how weve never really had a seat at the table in these things and we bear the worst do you think you should get a c. Or theobald sure thats part i mean part of the reason i can speak about it is because i can articulate it in a way that the west can understand you currently are. You know challenging. And allegedly and arguably corrupt regime what does it mean for you to say give us a seat at the table do you give a corrupt regime. A theater table to talk about now so i think one of the things this time show us is exactly how Human Behavior is universal regardless of culture in many ways because of very same things that manipulate americans and europeans are the very same things that manipulate us in the global south we just dont have the institutions to fight back and look how weak your institutions have gotten here. Behavioral modification system how do we fix it i think ive been a journalist for this is almost 35 years its never been as hard to work as a journalist as it is today i have to post bail 8 times my government filed 11 cases and invested 11 cases and investigations that year and then began arresting me and 21001st arrests was valentines day those over the valentine 00 and my government seems to work very well in february this february you know theyve theyve gone and filed a similar case against the largest broadcaster in the philippines what would you say. You know to to your critics in the philippines about the charges that you know the government has lodged against you did you break the law oh my lord. No i am challenging power right we continue to do our jobs and we will continue the line i always use this we are going to hold the line because the philippine constitution like the United States constitution has a bill of rights where patterned after the United States constitution and then let me ask you this what the cambridge talladega do d in the philippines the Company Operated in many places around the world this is something that also i learned spending time there but you know its really profitable to go in corrupt governments because governments have like really monetised that youve got sovereignty its something thats really hard for you for a company to replicate and you know with you karen you can dictate you know mineral rights resource rights passports all kinds of things in the philippines you know they are not as there are you know the story of the philippines you guys kind of got trumped before everybody else. Ok yes. But. Youre facing prison in quite serious charges least 80 years why do you care so much. Because then when it be easier to just. Go somewhere else i mean i could toss in question at you why you became a whistleblower right because this is the time that matters because if i didnt stand up for the standards and ethics the mission of journalism when it matters then Everything Else i did beforehand doesnt matter and then im not who i am defining who you are. I hate this time period. I hate that the baton was passed to me now but. Thats why it matters how do we get Civic Engagement when people dont know the facts. I dont think we can its kind of like what were doing right now were sitting on a stage were having a discussion there is an audience they know that were talking and if i Say Something thats not true or somebody can call it or a journalist can call it what we have now is a situation where i can become invisible and i can go and whisper in so everybodys ear and they all hear Something Different and i can do that now with the benefit of having followed everybody in the audience around for years and years and years reading through their Text Messages listening to their phones looking at everything that they look at even when they dont realize that theyre being watched and i dont think that we can have a functioning democracy when there is no longer Public Discourse because everything has become privatized and oftentimes people cant dont even know if theyre receiving something that is targeted or not which again goes back to if you get rid of transparency you get rid of accountability you get rid of democracy we can take questions from the audience maria Julie Posetti from the International Center for journalists ive spent time with you and with your News Organization and i know that you have learned a lot as a result of. The orchestrated disinflation campaigns the deliberate targeting of journalists and rappler in particular. Given that were talking particularly about what kristof has referred to as pushing if these problems you know from the global south to the west can you tell us sitting here in london what journalists in particular dealing with these problems now. Can do to prepare themselves for. So if i think this is an excess tensional moment for democracy globally journalism the death of journalism i want to say the death of journalist but the death of journali