all of the unexplored, it's quite motivating and exhilarating. i think you said i'm on the with the goal is to return to the field of ro ship carlos, and we will go to another area. it's reassuring to us that this field is very large and that we can dive a different locations and still find the cultural. allow me a quick reminder, all the news on our website, the address i'll just era dot com. type of check on the top stories here on al jazeera, the u. s. president thinks russia will make a military incursion into ukraine, but believes his counterpart vladimir putin doesn't want a full scale conflict. speaking at a press conference marking his 1st year in office, joe biden warned tough sanctions will be imposed on moscow in the event of an invasion. to i think you jest, west chester, united states and nina as she give music here. yes,

i think you will let the co pay a serious and dear price work, and he doesn't think now of course to one it's going to cost. and i think you regret have been done. meanwhile, the u. s. secretary of state is in ukraine to reaffirm american support. antony blink and warned russia could invade at very short notice. he'll meet russian foreign minister survey lebrun in geneva on friday. the 1st aid flight to tanya since saturdays volcanic eruption on some army has landed, the island has been cut off from the world since the disaster flight from new zealand is being followed by one from australia. wayne hay as monitoring development from oakland new zealand plane has landed and will now begin all floating it's a supplies has to be done. we have to remember it and contactless fashion, that is a, according to the tongue and government protocol because the tongue and authorities are very concerned about cov 19. i've only had one case since the pandemic began.

that was an october last year. so of course they're going through so much at the moment. the last thing they want is to deal with an outbreak of cov, at $900.00. so all aid deliveries must be done in a contactless fashion from now on. india has recall that its highest daily number of corona virus infections in 8 months. more than 317000 new tases are reported on thursday. cities across the country have brought back restrictions to stem. the driven by the macro variant, written by minister, has defied cause to quit during a rocha session in parliament bars. johnson said he won't be stepping down over the so called party gates scandal. he urged critics to wait for the outcome of inquiry into parties. and his downing street residence during current a virus lock downs. so those are the headlines. the news continues here on al jazeera after studio b, unscripted federal down to watch it by fidel. my name is bonnie pittman. i always thought of yoga as part of my indian heritage. i understand it to be about

transformation. but yoga itself seems to be transforming. western mentality is, is a lot about this instruments, very different from eastern tradition and what yoga was originally, yoga should belong to everyone. but i'm afraid that simple truth is getting lost in a world that so commercialized and politicized owns yoga analogies in ah, why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under it. because you attacked the truth tellers because the integrity of facts is gone. when i started seeing videos of people so angry with things that were frankly untrue. and i realize i was working for something that was evil. and i had been a part of actually creating a when mark soccer bird essentially said that it is okay for politicians to lie. that spells doom. ah,

my name is maria theresa and i'm a journalist and author the message that the government is sending is very clear. b, silence for your next i receive thousands of death threats online. i'm christopher wiley. i'm a data scientist, but most people know me as the cambridge analytical whistleblower, facebook knew about cambridge analytic is seen since 2015 before the story broke. facebook threatened to sue the guardian and then band me for whistle blowing. i revealed how our data is being manipulated for political gain without our consent. the since wrapper started reported the president to test that he did leave, charged and arrested. it makes you feel a bummer, but i think that's the point,

right. i'm inspired by how maria continue to stand up for the truth in the face of real danger. chris's revelations lead the largest b, the crime investigation in history. if we allow cheating in our democratic person, and we allow this amount, what about? what about the time after that? we know 1st hand what happens when social media is weaponized and the danger it now poses to our democracies around the world. this is an existential moment. and it's time for us all to ah, i think it's still good to talk to you, you figured out and then you created a system. you taught yourself how to code, you learn the data,

and then you built this whole system that was very efficient as modifying behavior . and then you decided to take it down. when did you decide it was wrong? when i 1st joined the, the company that later became cambridge analytic at the l group, i joined the company that at the time was working on projects that were geared towards counter extremism encounter radicalization. looking at how extremism spreads online and we got discovered by a guy by the name of the banning who long story 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 that, you know, witnessing the inception of an insurgency the already campaign. and so when i

started seeing videos of people and focus groups who were so angry with things that were frankly untrue. and i realized i was working for something i was evil. and i had, you know, been a part of actually creating it. and i couldn't keep doing that. it's interesting when you said you were looking at it for a counter radicalization at 1st i came to it because i was looking at how social network analysis spread the ideology of terrorism and we created rapper. because if you can convince people to blow themselves up with this radical ideology, why couldn't you have something are for good? yeah, right. that's why we created rattler. but then when you started seeing the negative part, it's hard to pull yourself out. how'd? and to be a whistleblower. what gave you the courage to do that? yeah, i think at least for me you know, growing up kind of,

i've an outsider. i was partly in a wheelchair when i was growing up because of a invisible disability. and then lobe on top of that sort of being clear, i came out as it was. so barbara, i've been coming out for my entire life and you know, for me it's that sense of otherness that and comfortable with being uncomfortable. yeah. that i think gave me a little bit of a nudge to help me become, become with a bar, but with setting up rattler. and you know, being on the outside, i think you're going out there every single day. pissing off a lot of people. i try not do you find that you know, your life's journey sort of influences that? oh gosh i so i, i was born in the philippines and then moved the united states when marcia los declared in 1972. but when i was with americans, i never felt completely american. and when i'm filled with philipino,

so i don't feel completely filipino either. so i guess it's that it's the otherness part of it. right. and that, that's a good training for journalists or with the line or whistle blowing. but you find that there's a bit of an overlap because not that i would ever call myself a journalist. but in some sense, as i feel similar, there's something similar about that. you know, shoving uncomfortable information into people, faces and going, you have to pay attention to that and feeling the consequences of that. so i was gonna say that the mission of journalism, right, you speak truth to power and you know, power doesn't like that in your and i think you've been speaking truth. i mean, there's a cost to yourself, but you also seem to learn something more from each instance that you've done that . has this been a good experience or a bad experience? the mixed bag, i guess. i mean, i think it's been on the hor,

a good perience for i've learned a lot. so, you know, you know, after watching 2016 happen and knowing so many things about what was going on. you know, i learned that i do feel compelled to speak uncomfortable truth, but at the same time, you know, you know, getting called to testify. congress, you know, as the 20 somethings gave or living in london, it's not something that you really expect to be part of your life's journey. that was pretty intimidating is pretty to me, to have, you know, the department of justice. now the i sitting behind me and you know, giving me a subpoena after that but i think on the whole, it's been a good experience because if you think back before 2018, the idea that privacy or data protection, you know, the internet would be

a mainstream clinical issue in the 2020 election and the primary race would kind of be laughable. so i feel like at least in that sense, exposing wrongdoing and exposing the structure is that facilitate and support that wrong doing with companies like facebook. yeah. have at least opened up an awareness into a conversation and our mainstream political discourse, i think, is productive. how easy is it to manipulate math on a mass scale? i get frustrated a lot by the, the current sort of discussion about the election manipulation because it's so focuses on the united states and slightly western britain because britain in the united states, and i'm sure coming from the philippines. you know, this for while have been manipulating elections and democracies around the world for hundreds of years. britain was a empire a well. and the reason why, you know,

the national drink in britain is t 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 you've got a gradually eroding information system where lies are everywhere, where you don't know what to trust. you've got foreign countries left right and center, trying to manipulate your trick. you deceive you and corruption rife in the administration, looking at the philippines and something that i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on coming from an ex us connie, where you had a large country dictating the terms of how government works. you know, it's, you know, becoming independent. yeah. and now having

a large american corporations run by a bunch of straight white dudes in america. so 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 neo colonialism happening online? so you're, you're the 1st person i heard say that there are colonialism. never died. i just moved online. 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 on what's the description of the philippines stanley car now 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 my spain and then the united

states. and i think it's ironic that the country that div democracy is also the the place where silicon valley then as given someone like do, terry, they're bull snarl. these 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 are countries in the global south bear the brunt of all the tech decisions that have been made. right. and then how do we get power? how we've never really had a seat at the table in these things. and we bear the worse. do you think that you should go see the table? sure of. that's 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 on an allegedly and arguably corrupt regime. what does it mean

for you to say give us a c other table? do you give a corrupt regime a seat at the 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 a very same things that manipulate americans and europeans are the very same things that manipulate us in the global south. we just don't have the institutions to fight back and look how weak your institutions have gotten here. um, behavioral modification system. ah, how do we fix it? i, i've been a journalist for this almost 35 years. it's never been as hard to work as a journalist, as it is today. i have to post bill 8 times. my government filed 11 cases and in death did 11 cases and investigations that year and then began arresting me in 2019 1st arrest was valentine's. that was, while i have a valid o n,

my government seems to work very well in february this february. you know, they, they've gone and filed a similar case against the largest broadcaster in the philippines. what would you say? you know, to see your critics in the philippines about the charges that you know, the government has launched against yo, did you break the law? oh my lord, i know 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 pattern after the united states constitution. and let me ask you this. what the cambridge analytics do in the philippines, the company operated in many places around the world. this is something that also i learned, spending time there, that you know, it,

it's really profitable. so go and correct government. because governments have like, really monetize of all of that. you've got sovereignty, it's something that's really hard for our company to replicate. and you know, with that you can, you can dictate mineral rise resource, right? passports, all kinds of things in the philippines. you know, they had an office there, you know, the story of the philippines. you guys kind of got trump before everybody else. okay. yes. you're facing present and quite serious charges, least 80 years. why do you care so much? because then wouldn't it be easier to just go somewhere else? i mean, i could tosses in question that you why you became a whistleblower right? because this is the time that matters. because if i didn't stand up for the

standards and ethics, the mission of journalism, when it matters, then everything else i did beforehand doesn't matter. then i'm not who i am. defining who you are. oh, i hate this, i'm sure it's. ah, i hate that the baton was passed to me now, but i that's why it matters the how do we get civic engagement when people don't know the facts, i don't think we can as kind of like what we're doing right now. we're sitting on a stage, we're having a discussion. there is an audience they know that we're talking. and if i say something that's not true or somebody can call us out, or a journalist can call us what we have now, is a situation where i can become invisible. and i can go and whisper into everybody's ear and they all hear something different, right? 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 don't realize that they're being watch and i don't think that we can have a functioning democracy when there is no longer public discourse because everything has become privatized. and oftentimes people can't, don't even know if they're receiving something that is targeted or not, which again goes back to if you get rid of transparency, you get rid of accountability and you get rid of democracy. we can take questions from the audience. maria julie is edie. from the international center for journalists, i've spent time with you and with your news organizations, and i know that you have learned a lot as a result of the orchestra disinformation campaigns, the deliberate targeting of journalists and rattler. in particular,

given that we're talking particularly about what christopher has referred to as porting, if these problems from the global south to the west. can you tell us sitting here in london? what's journalists in particular, dealing with these problems now can do to prepare themselves. oh lord, ah, so if i think this is an existential moment for democracy, globally journalism, the death of journalism, i won't say the death of journalists, but the death of journalism is only the 1st signal for the death of democracy. our dystopian present is your dystopian future if we don't do anything right now. and of course, with elections coming up in the united states. it's a huge problem. but what are the danger signals the fact that we don't know the facts. one, the fact that you don't know whom to trust because in the philippines,

the 1st targets with packs and these are exponential attacks, right? i was getting an average of 90 hate 90 hate messages per hour in the philippines. in 2016, our data showed that women were attacked at least 10 times more than men. so massaged jenny sexism, the kind of gender sexual lives, gender, the tax on women. what's the end goal? you pound someone to silence so that a whole narrative collapses. and then the voice with the loudest, mega phone is amplified, bottom up, and then top down our president. for example, the attacks against me and rap lar, we were attacked for a year on facebook and social media. and then after that, a year later, president to character said the same exact thing, which is like astro turf thing. it is,

it leaves the groundwork for what the government does. you are all living through something similar. it's just our institution crumbled within 6 months. your institutions are a little bit stronger than ours, but human beings behave the same way. and the lack of trust is ushering in a whole new 93940, right? all of a sudden we're looking at hashes and i guess this is why i'm so scared and i want silicon valley. i want the west to have stronger institutions to do something more about it. because if we don't, instead of a year or 2 years of this or going to look at decades of fascism. my question to you, christopher, i am from kenya. you work for cambridge analytical, robi, of a 70 people died may be directly or indirectly related to the role of cambridge. and the question then is,

is it legal or moral for british or american funds to work in countries like how was take advantage of lack of regulations and yet continue to operate. this is something that i found most shocking when you've got a, a company in country a, let's say it's in britain engaging with multiple firms and contractors each and their own jurisdiction. creating disinformation or hate propaganda that were it entirely in britain would be wholly illegal. and then disseminating that in another country, because you've got so many different players involved and so many different components of wrong doing, it's actually really difficult to figure out where technically did a crime occur in tax while we're just starting to, you know,

create principles and rules that prevent people from just hopping from one jurisdiction to another. but with data on the internet, we are where tax law was the 1950, not realizing that the internet is global. that data is global, that this information can be global. we lack, you know, not only the, the actual institutions to police, but we actually lack like principals. and so lawmakers start to understand, actually how the internet works. i don't mean not sarcastically, like, as in that it is actually global. and that we need to create principles that, that in embrace that global ness. lots of wrongdoing can happen. maria, you have been tried since, and yet continued your fight. i'm originally from turkey and living in discovery for the last 20 years. and in my country, many journalists are in jail now,

and many others are afraid of writing speaking. and so what do you say about journalism and fear? we've never been as vulnerable as we are today. because power in countries like yours and mine ah, has taken what the internet, what social media, what companies like cambridge analytic and it is, it isn't only cambridge analytics. we now have filipino companies like cambridge analytic, right? ah, they are the ones taking advantage of it. why is it that the bad guys are the ones who are taking these type these tools of manipulation and using them against us for us, for some one like chandler dar for example, right? he had to flee his country and he made the decision to do that. for fear of his life, others are dying. we see this and every single report that comes out about journalism

. why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack because you attacked the truth tellers because the integrity of facts is ah gone. right? we're not agreeing on the facts and the internet. the way social media is set up. this one concept of growing it by having you choose friends of friends to grow has polarized our societies. so we have far more polarized societies and then we have no understanding of what the facts are. and then you attack institutions. and when you have someone like your leader and my leader, they become stronger in this environment. they hijack. and this is why democracy him dying in our areas of influence. we need to protect the facts because if you don't have the facts,

you can't have integrity of elections. you can't have integrity of markets. how can we have a working society if we don't have a public sphere where we agree on what the me in the in we've always had the devil and the angel on our shoulders right. the way the social media platforms have been formulated. fans the devil in your ear. why is it that you're allowed to experiment on societies and when real people get killed? there are no actual consequences. it's like they invited people to their house and they gave everyone guns and said it's the wildlife. well, you know me, i'm, or where facebook's systems were being deliberately exploited to propagate,

hey messaging contributions to you know, ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing. you came into this, you looked at the code, you looked at the data and you later realized its impact on society. and waiting for silicon valley to realize that as well, the hello miss city in vietnam once so i gone the old capital of sunk at his heart. his lamb. so square were journalists, diplomats, military staff and spies, rubbed shoulders in its famous hotels during the vietnam war. i was assigned to yet not by the associated press, and i arrived june 1962. the caravel hotel burst under the headline,

november 1963. when there was a number to recruit a car, which led to the assassination of the president and his brother. in over 24 hour period, the center of saigon was, was zone. the press retreated, in effect that the caravel hotel. and many of the story is mentioned we were seeing was from the caravel frank assessments. this crisis just continue to recon location, even though perhaps he believes in the beginning that he was informed opinions like the whole edition will now be under incredible pressure from the young people. that is one of the most types of things come out of this critical debate. do you think a should be facilitated? not sure. okay, it's a great. it's a really simple question. let's give tommy a child wants inside story on now, jazeera, the athletes i'm larger than life,

but the world of wrestling is shrouded in secrecy. one or one east gets redirect inside a sport with ancient tradition. modern scandal on elgin 0. ah hello, i'm down, jordan and joe hall with a quick reminder at the top stories here on al jazeera, the u. s. president says he believes russia will make a military incursion into ukraine, but thinks his counterpart that i'm a huge in doesn't want a full scale conflict. speaking of a press conference mocking his 1st year in office, joe biden warm, tough sanctions will be imposed on moscow in the event of an invasion. white house correspondent, kimberly how can u. s. president joe biden spoke for almost 2 hours from the east room of the white house given this was only his.