>> emmanuel macron says lebanon will continue to sink unless reforms are made. the french president in beirut two days after a blast kills 135 people and wounding 5000 others. anger among populations mounting 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely for six years is believed to be the cause of the blast. overtakes europe with the highest number of covid-19 deaths in the world. thank you for joining us here on france 24. the french president is in the

lebanese capitol.. emmanuel macron inin beirut two days after a blast rips through the city killing 135 people and woundiding 5000. his visit comes one dayy after france responded to calls for help by sending a and medical personnenel to the country. afafter his meeting with the president, he said the country will continue to sink if reforms are not made. to aidy the priority is and supppport the population unconditionally. france has been pushing for months even years now for necessary reforms in certain sectors, energy, government-run tracks, the fight agagainst corruption, if these r reforms e not carried outut, lebanon will cocontinue s sking your -- sinking. >> why is s emmanuel macron in lebanon two days after this blast? >> he is there to reassure

lebanese people. he wants to show that france is friends with lebanon. it is true a lot of lebanese christians are francophones. france is the big sister country. the core of this message is clear in the latest statement made by emmanuel macron on the streets of lebanon as he was speaking to a large crowd of lebanese people. he said, i am here and it is my duty. i want to help you as a people medical you food and supplies. i guarantee this hands -- this aid will not go into the hands of corrupters. you want to shows that france is there. the forefront is to control how this aid is used. accidentust the last in the very troubled recent history of lebanon. -- one year the country

there has been a lot of civil unrest. >> like a pressure cooker. >> it is a a catastrophe. there is no cash. banks have been limiting the amounts of cash people can take out of the bank. that has been going on for months now. is extremely bad on all fronts. this is just the last catastrophe. for most of them, this is the last proof that their political class is corrupt. there is -- there are massive mismanagement problems that are so huge that 3000 tons of portsives were stored on a and now there is no port to speak about. what he is doing is saying france is watching, we want to make sure there is no mismanagement with this aid. we want to make sure that indeed it will go to the right places. he said this in a statement that he was ready to manage the international relief efforts. anchor: a crowd on the street of

beirutut has urged him to oustst leadership in the country. spspeaking of his visit, is itt something that the entire political spectrum in lebanon will be e happy ababout? >> that is very unclear at this stage. you could imagine that this christian community in lebanon, a lot t of them are francophones and franco file, a lot of them will not be happy about it. i'm not so sure that they will be happy about this visit. indeed, there are 18 different official sects in the lebanese constitution. france is seen as a friend by some of them. but not by all of them. obviously this is very difficult. we will have to see how the lebanese take this. what is interesting to note is the history of france is different from algeria or other countries. what we are seeing here, a french president turning up 48

hours after a major catastrophe to say, i am here to manage it would be unheard of in a country l like algeria or others. anchor:: the member they were in ththe streetets demanding changt long ago. >> france cannot play that role in algeria. it is a different set up. france has been losing a lot of its influence in lebanon over the past decade, over the past 15 years. less and less people are learning french. schools are not as important as they were. while this is an opportunity for france to come on the front of the scene, it is important to know that me in has been wanting to visit lebanon for a few months now -- emmanuel macron has been wanting to visit lebanon for a few months now. it is important to note that there is real risk of the whole lebanese society breaking down

and exploding over this. obviously for a lot of people, this is a cute proof that there is something very wrong at the proof.the state -- acute it is important to reassure people. this is what he is going to do. the question is is it going to work. he is going to give a pressss coconference at 5:30 paris time. >> thank you very much for that, james. in beirut two days after the e blast that ripped through the cityty lik a an earthquake. rescue teams working looking for signs of life. 135 people lost and thousands wounded. residents have been taking to the streets to clean up the capitol as the government has shrugged. a new day in lebanon and the clock is ticking. search for survivors into the night after they wrote wasas rocked by huge --- beirurut was

rocked by huhuge explosion. the hours after a disaster like this one are crucial with the chances of finding survival in the rubble dropping after that point beard -- afafter that poi. dozens are stillll missing. the area rescuers have to cover is huge. earlier in the day, there was good news as this 27-year-old man was pulled f from the rubbl. further inland the blast broke windows and knocked doors off their hinges. many people here have little faith in authorities to get things done. they grabbed their brooms and went to work cleaning up the streets themselves while some businesses have offered to help asked fores, discounts, or even free of charge. >> [speaking foreieignanguage] amidt that attitude comes anger at the corrupt state volunteers say is responsible

for the blast. >> [speaking foreign language] >> a state of emergency y has bn declared inn lebananon for the t two weeks. the government has announced an aid package worth 55 million euros depending on the exchange rate used. anchor: the cause of the blast has not yet been confirmed. however, all fingers are pointing to ammonium nitrate stored unsafely in the port. anger was already high before the blast and many now feel the mismanagement which resulted in tuesday's blast demonstrate that those in power are inept. there is a report from beirut. >> peoplplare horrifified. peoplele are sayining we have bn attacked by our own government who do notot care about t us. 2 2013 2750hat inn

tons of amammonium nitrate, and criticalally dangerous material, it has also beeeen used in bombs in the past. it was traveling on a boat and was abandoned becaususe there we shshipng proroblems outside of e port in beirut. nonody came to get it. rt officls decidedececause itit waso explosi to movett in warehouses to keep it away from the water area to try and maintain the safety. it was essentially forgotten about. but not completely forgotten about. both the head of customsms and e port have said that at least on two occasions over the last few years, lettersrs were s sent toe judiciary ofof the govnmenent to alert ththem that something hado be done about this problem. everyone was a aware that it waa highly expose of serial and nonothing was dodone. ---- explosive material. it is not unreasonable to describe it as a ticking timime bomb. thisis enormous explosion

devastated livives by simple lak of attention paid by the government. sayingtesters have been that their government does not care about them. absolute rage here. anchor: a earlier from beirut. coming to terms with the huge blast that ripped through the capitol city. the majority of the population lives outside of lebanon. the blast in a root has banded many people together -- in beirut has banded many people together. >> as the world comes a term with the explosions that rocked lebanon, in london it is another blow added to a long list of grievances. >> [indiscernible]e] >> in the city of l light, the eiffelel tower went darker earlr

than usual as an act of solidarity commemorating the victims of the destruction. the sisizable lebanon community, tuesday's blast was at least in part the fault of the lebanese government. [speaking foreign language] >> despite its much was relationship with opening, they are inin solidararity with its neighbhbor. tel aviv meansns valley building lilifted the lebanese flag on wednesday. the countries are in a state of war, but they put aside hard feelings, a message that humanity comes before conflict t. lebanon has taken thousands of palestinian refugees. palestinians had a candlelit vigil. >> [speaking foreign language] flags in the west

bank were lowered to half mast to pay homage to lebanon. anchor: to the latest on the pandemic, daily covid-19 infections in france reached their highest level in two months. nearly 1700 people infected. maskauthorities have made wearing mandatory in outdoor public areas. the paris police is making a similar ruling for the french capitol in the coming hours. the coronavirus is hitting latin america particularly hard. it now has the highest death toll in the world, overtaking europe. while brazil and mexico are the most affected infection rates, they have accelerated in colombia, peru, argentina and bolivia. >> a night of discomfort for some peace of mind where a limited number of free coronavirus tests at a drive-through, leading to huge

queues. >> [speaking foreign language] >> brazil has the world's second highest death toll with more than 2.8 million people contracting the disease. covid-19 has spread to half of brazil's indigenous tribes and on wednesday, a chief lost his life to the coronavirus. thehboring columbia is in midst of its fourth month in lockdown, really not only from the coronavirus, it also is economic and psychological side effects. estimate thahat numbers have increased by 21%. with cases on n the rise, the president has extended the lockdown until late august. in bolivia, one business has created a mobile crematorium as a solution to overwhelmed

funeral services. >> [speaking foreign language] >> over 3300 people have died in the indian nation so far. police found bodies of hundreds of suspected covid v victims in vehicles and i in the streets of three citieses. >> thank you very much for watching. ♪ >> welcome to this edition of the "frfrance 24" entry. my guess is brittany keiser, a former employee of the dish consultancy -- british consultancy firm.

the firm is notorious for its involvement in the election of donald trump and in the brerexit campaign. she just released a memoir about her time workiking for cambridg. ththank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> you worked for some 3.5 years for cambridge and you decided to speak out about your time there. can you tell us what exactly cambridge analytical did with to 87formation of up million facebook users in order to many relate them in the lead up to the election of donald trump? companiesone of many that are on the political realm was licensing as much data as you can get. that is quite a lot. we don't have regular and that allow us to know how much data is being collected about us,

what companies hold, or what they're going to use it for. unfortunately what t i saw at te end of the truck campaign was that data had been used in order to predict people's behavior so that individuals could be manipulated. i say manipulated instead of persuaded because not everyone was persuaded to sign up to vote and come to the polls and engage in important issues. some people were unfortunately persuaded to not go to the polls and to inherently have a distrust in politics. >> how did cambridge analytica use psychological operations? this is essentially of -- a form of modern-day warfare. >> psychological operations means you use behavioral science to understand how people make decisions, how they can be persuaded. that worked in their -- that was their strategy. they worked with psychologists

in order to put together surveys that tested how people saw the world, how they made their decisions every day. when you have that type of information, you can target specific communications all the way down to an individual or specific groups of people that change their behavior orr convince them to take an action that they might have not taken. >> the group that they focused on were neurotics. can you explain who they are and why they decided it function best two-minute blade those particular function -- particular personality types? >> there are a lot of different personality types. when someone is neurotic, it means you are persuaded by fear-based messaging. cambridge analytica, the trump campaign manager the main super pac was undertaking their testing and saw that the most successful cases of

psychological data was to use fear-based mesessaging and send that the p people who are neurotic, people who are emotionally unstable, people who might easily make snap decisions. that was what they contntinue to use for the rest of the campaign budget on negative messaging only. >> can you give me clear examples on the types of ads that were sent to thesese people to t target them on their facebk accountsts? >> yes. one of the examples that i i was showown on my colleagues that rn the truck campaign and the trump super pac -- trump campaign, was how they used a group that was labeled to deter them from voting. these were people that were shown to be hillary clinton supporters but would never vote for donald trump. so the only way to spend money in ordrd to talk t to these peoe was to decide to make them disengage from the political process. one of t the examples s that i s shown was in this quote from

michelle obama in 2007 wherere e wawas saying barack and i are spending time with our daughters and taking care of our family. she said, if you cannot run your own house, you cannot run the white house. that was taken out of context and spliced with other pieces of information a about bill clinton and monica lewinsky in order to make it seem like michelle obama was saying that hillary clinton could not take care of her own marital relationship and there for, could not run the white house. this was sent to conservative women where family values were considered their number one issue. this was made to turn them off from hillary clinton who all of their data said that they were going to support her and make them think less of her. >> they use a form of advertising that was basically fear-based, promoted sexexism, racism, all sorts of things. >> and disinformation. >> disinformation. at what point did you start to question how ethical all of this

was? why did you take action earlier on and speak out? why did it take you so long? >> i wish i would have come out earlier. i wish i would have actually seen all of those ads and blown the whistle before election day. i was shown one month after the election by everybody that ran the campaign and the super pac, everything that they did. it was what they called a debriefing. for 8 hours each day, ththey collllected highlyly divided pe, how they were targegeted and examples of the messaging used. that was the first time that everybody that did not work on the campaign saw the bare bones of was going on behind the scenes. i wish i would have known earlier and i wish i would have done somethihing but it is never too l late to do the right thin. >> you were a democrat, but yet you ended up working for some of the most popowerful people from the far-right in the united states. ultimately, how did that happen? were you targeted?

have 400s really why i pages of a book toto explain wht happened. i want everyone to know that everyone is vulnerable to being persuaded. everybody can be targeted. if it happened to me, it can happen to anybody. and it does on a day-to-day basis. we are not protected today from anything that happened in 20161. >> in your book, the narrator's voice almost feels at times schizophrenic. i feel like you both are extremely smart and savvy. at the same time, you portray yourself as someone naive and who is in a way a victim who was used. who is brittany kaiser? >> it is hard d to quantify what happened. all i can explainn is what i experience on a day-to-day basis and as a way t that i view all f that now. i think it is important for people to understand how vulnerable they are. there are a lot of really amazing people at facebook right moving fastnk that

and d breaking things was great and now they are questioning the decisions that mark zuckerberg is making, decisions that don't protect our democracy. i bet you never -- i bet you they never thought they would be in that position. it is important for people as soon as they see something going wrong in their company to start to question it. >> tell me about the role you played in the brexit referendum. >> cambridge analytica was period ofth evu for a time to analyze data to figure out who in the united kingdom would be persuaded to vote to leave. this was an initial piece of data work using u.k. data and a party survey asking people about why they believe or not. cambridge analytica found white a few different groups of people who would be interested in voting to leave -- quite a few different groups of people. -- their about those

psychographics and what type of messaging with persuade then and that was delivered -- persuade them. whether they used that knowledge fully or not, they created that data company in order to have a full national companion that as we know now used disinformation, abused data loss, and even contravened like tour spending regulations -- electoral spendingng regulations. there democracy was sold to the highest bidder. that bidder was aaron banks. >> there is another episode in the book where you talk about your journey to parar to pitch to a sarkozy team in 2016. you made your pitch. didid the french say no? >> it was the first time anyone had told him no in his entire life. alexander makes the presentation and d you can see the looks on their face that they were shocked at the amount of data

that is actually available, not just on americans, but on n freh citizens and what could be done even under french law in order to run these data-driven campaigns and elections. they said, we don't want anything to do with this. we personally believe that no matter how effective your campaign is, if the french people found out we were using their data in this way to talk to them about politics, that campaign would lose just because of that information. >> and why is that? >> i think there is a completely different culture in most european cultures -- countries than in america where people know how bad it can get when data is abused. that is why germany has the strictest data loss because of what happened in world war ii. national registries of personal data were used to commit atrocities in the holocaust. that legacy of what h happened when governments abused data

means that the laws and regulations in europope protect citizens in a different way. >> cambridge analytica is defunct. yet there are many other new companies doing exactly the same thing. >> right now we are not anymore protected then we were in 2016. i think people are probably more vulnerable this year in the 2020 election. now there are probably many different cambridge analyticas, not just in the u.s., it over the world. people know how to use advanced data science and mark zuckerberg has decided that facebook is not going to moderate political speech. anything that comes out of a politicians mouth is newsworthy will not ber they held to the same committee ststandards. i amam not allowed to gogo on facebook -- site site sexism or racism. somehow, politicians arere not being held to those standards.

andink that is dangerous facebook has created the biggest threat to our democracy thihis year than they could haveve imaginined. > how can people stop themselves from being cute -- being mamanipulated? how can they stop their data from being taken without their knowing? should they put their phones away when they don't want anyone to know where they have been? how can they y stop leaving this trailer r data everywhere? >> the first step is to become digitally literate. understand how much data you produce eveveryday. read the terms and conditions before you download you're next app. if you want to use a lot of technology platforms, we have to give our data away. hopefully that will change and we will have more transparency into what data we are producing, who is being shared with and for what purposes it will be used and have the option to opt out. >> would you say our democracy is under threat with the way information n is being u used against us? >> absolutely.

our democracy is under threat. until we have detected understand that -- big tech understand that, we will still be vulnerable in election years. >> brittany kaiser,

- hey i'm darius rucker, coming up onreel south. - [marlise] d d boom ye peoplpl check me out. she'e's ssed awa she's dead. younung mother's rhtht to di. this time in "62 days," onreel south. - [female narrator] support for this program is provided by south arts, sponsors of the southern circuit tour of independent filmmakers, with funding from the national endowment for the e arts. [bluesy guitar rock] ♪