Because The United Kingdom?

[Daan]

Op-ed in the UK magazine 'The Critic' on double standards in UK policing with examples: https://thecritic.co.uk/two-tier-policing-is-not-new/

Aris Roussinos' article in Unherd from last week on ethnic conflict in the UK and the government's reaction to it is also quite thoughtful: https://unherd.com/2024/08/how-britain-ignored-its-ethnic-conflict/

 

 

Edited August 10 by Daan

[Mr King]

22 minutes ago, Daan said:

Op-ed in the UK magazine 'The Critic' on double standards in UK policing with examples: https://thecritic.co.uk/two-tier-policing-is-not-new/

 

 

Sounds like fascist disinformation.

[sunday]

11 minutes ago, Mr King said:

Sounds like fascist disinformation.

Indeed! It contains Bible quotations, even!

[Ivanhoe]

How about the public health figures that recommended children under the age of 2 be vaxxed and masked?

[Murph]

Well. they can try:  Have all the high ranking Brits lost their ever loving minds?  We have a new winner for Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys apparently?

 

 

[Mr King]

57 minutes ago, Murph said:

Well. they can try:  Have all the high ranking Brits lost their ever loving minds?  We have a new winner for Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys apparently?

 

 

The west won the cold war just so it could become the gayer version of the Soviet Union.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

In fact the use of rumour, untruth, outright lies, doctored media on social media is distinctly reminicent of the late USSR.

People like have easy to understand 'facts' spoon fed to them. Let me show you an example. Its a Soviet cartoon showing the US Military developing the AIDS virus.  The swastika's are a nice touch, no?

 

What you have here, is an internet meme, about 20 years before there were any internet memes. And If that doesnt illustrate the potential pitfalls of social media, then I guess nothing does. Just because the racist prick Elon impresses some people on the other side of the pond, I see no reason why we have to take his rabblerousing shit, for that is precisely what it was.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/06/tech/elon-musk-civil-war-uk-riots/index.html

If a Russian or a Chinese did that, we would be doing the same thing. Just because he pretends to be an American right now, see no reason why we should be impressed.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

If (When) the Met comes for me they'd better bring a LOT of help or find some way to catch me unawares.

Things are different in the United States in that we are in a position to defend ourselves more readily against impressment.

After a moment's reflection I think that a foreign power just threatened American citizens with unlawful imprisonment.  Last time the British tried that it started a war.  I've always thought of myself as pro-British but from here on out I'll sing La Marseillaise.

Turns out Trump was right about the UK all along...

[sunday]

13 minutes ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

Last time the British tried that it started a war. 

1812 war, if I am not wrong.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

If (When) the Met comes for me they'd better bring a LOT of help or find some way to catch me unawares.

Things are different in the United States in that we are in a position to defend ourselves more readily against impressment.

After a moment's reflection I think that a foreign power just threatened American citizens with unlawful imprisonment.  Last time the British tried that it started a war.  I've always thought of myself as pro-British but from here on out I'll sing La Marseillaise.

Turns out Trump was right about the UK all along...

You are turning it on its head. It was an American citizen threatening the security of the United Kingdom by spreading disinformation. That's no better than what Putin has been doing.

Things are different here. Damage our security, don't come here again, or face the consequences. Assange found out the same thing.

Trump is full of shit and always has been. If he was ever right about Britain, it's an accident.

[Murph]

Ok, I think we need to have a definition of what "disinformation" is in this context.  Does pointing out the crime wave of Muslim immigrants equal disinformation?  Not poking, but I would like to know what disinformation actually is in this context.  And how did Trump get in this?

[Mr King]

35 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

You are turning it on its head. It was an American citizen threatening the security of the United Kingdom

When antifa and BLM where orchestrating a campaign of political terror across the US this is how your current leader responded in solidarity with them.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 hours ago, Murph said:

Ok, I think we need to have a definition of what "disinformation" is in this context.  Does pointing out the crime wave of Muslim immigrants equal disinformation?  Not poking, but I would like to know what disinformation actually is in this context.  And how did Trump get in this?

Pointing out the UK is 'sure to have a civil war', is disinformation on a level that once got William Joyce's neck stretched. Thankfully we moved on from such things.

Let's look at it from the other way. If a UK social media group was egging on a narrative about an American civil war, openly mocking your president, and offering a vehicle for antifa to post violent, incendiary content, how would Americans feel about it? Wouldn't your senior lawyers make noises about extradition?

In fact you did for Julian Assange, and imho what he did was on the same level.

Here is another one, claiming rioters will be deported to the Falklands. Complete bollocks, but 2 million read it and presumably  believed it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/08/elon-musk-shares-faked-telegraph-story-rioters-falklands-camps

Edited August 11 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 minutes ago, Mr King said:

When antifa and BLM where orchestrating a campaign of political terror across the US this is how your current leader responded in solidarity with them.

 

Try as I might, I'm not seeing taking a knee as incitement to civil war, or spreading disinformation. Cluess? Perhaps. Well they are politicians. But It's no worse than Trump claiming NHS hospitals are knee deep in blood (which they arent).

[Mr King]

8 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Try as I might, I'm not seeing taking a knee as incitement to civil war, or spreading disinformation. Cluess? Perhaps. Well they are politicians. But It's no worse than Trump claiming NHS hospitals are knee deep in blood (which they arent).

Yeah, while American cities were aflame, peoples homes and business being burnt down and looted, and people were being murdered in the street, expressing solidarity with the perpetrators of these crimes is no big deal.

You're full of it Stuart.

Now write some long diatribe about how I am wrong and it's different and I just dont understand British culture.

[Daan]

Still rather bizarre to describe the one sentence expectation / opinion of a celebrity tech entrepreneur as disinformation. It is not that the man has any credentials as a social or political scientist, neither did he present it as some well researched, objective piece. 

The overreaction by the petty tyrant running the Met amounts to political persecution. The UK would do well to send the clearly stressed out chap into early retirement with a gift of a trip to Hohenschönhausen in Berlin for some moral education. 

[NickM]

1 hour ago, Daan said:

n. The UK would do well to send the clearly stressed out chap into early retirement with a gift of a trip to Hohenstaufen in Berlin for some moral education. 

 

Just for clarity's sake, it has to be said that the aforementioned facility is a former STASI Holding Facility.

[JWB]

 

[R011]

17 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Since you are such an expert in Britain, doubtless you will have heard of William joyce.  Lord Haw Haw? An Irishmen that spent 6 years of the war broadcasting propaganda and dreck to either ruin the British morale, or stir them up in dissent. What did we do when the war ended? Strung him up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw

And before you go off on one, decrying someone just airing their honest opinion, you would do well to recall the Americans that broadcast for Nazi Germany, whom either got 12 years after the war if they were lucky, or disappeared into Soviet custody never to be seen again.

https://www.history.com/news/6-world-war-ii-propaganda-broadcasters

The truth is, there has been a fundimental change in the way information has disseminated since the 1990's. In the past, newspapers or broadcasters had to be sure what they reported was right, or face libel charges or sanctions, possibly even worse if their reports incited riots. Even then, there was a remarkable ability to fire up the public to do things it shouldnt do. Remember the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' Broadcast, or Volkischer Beobachter in Nazi Germany, the paper of the Nazi party.

Now imagine you have just such a powerful broadcasting system. On your desktop computer, your tablet, your mobile phone. Your every word can, under the right algorythhm, reach every other person in the country. Now if you are just broadcasting cat videos, no problem. If on the other hand you are preaching violent messages to harm your fellow human beings, there certaintly is clearly a problem. This was demonstrated on January 6th when decent, ordinary people were fired up to perform acts of violence from tweets. Or in this country, where they were instructed asylum seekers were murderers who killed little girls, and tried to get a nation to rip itself to shreds for others amusement.

We can go on with the same rules of the 20th century, which never worked very well at the time, and pretend there isnt a problem with the new technology. Or we can hold the owners of social media responsible for what their people broadcast. Maybe the deep thinkers here have an alternative response, but frankly I doubt it. At least, Ive never heard one.

Incidentally, countries name themselves. I dont think you are in a position to cast aspersions on our name, particularly as your States look anything but United these days. But as always, its up to you.

 

They weren't convicted for speaking controversial or allegedly false opinions, but for treason during wartime.  Nor did the Western Allies try to extradite citizens of neutral countries for making Axis propaganda, though they rather stretched it with Joyce.  As for Assange, he wasn't extradited for publishing alleged lies, but for publishing truths that should have stayed hidden 

This isn't wartime and giving the government power to decide what is true or false is dangerous.

[R011]

7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

You are turning it on its head. It was an American citizen threatening the security of the United Kingdom by spreading disinformation. That's no better than what Putin has been doing.

Things are different here. Damage our security, don't come here again, or face the consequences. Assange found out the same thing.

Trump is full of shit and always has been. If he was ever right about Britain, it's an accident.

I'm pretty sure people like George Galloway and his ilk were posting in support of American rioters, not just peaceful BLM protesters.  I doubt any major city US police chiefs were asking for their extradition.

[Burncycle360]

This is all very good. 

 

This needs to happen, and at a quickening pace, because positive change won't come without things reaching a head. The longer it takes, the more it advantages those who want to destroy.  The frog boils slowly.  That's why Trump was so important, he offended the sensibilities of the establishment so much that they dropped the pretense, accelerating the culture war that was always coming after the advent of the internet and maturation of social media. Had it simmered another generation there would be no stopping it.

 

The silent majority are at a disadvantage; they never wanted to start a movement so they are reluctant to challenge existential threats that come under a pretense that is difficult to counter without looking bigoted. They will only act when things become intolerable.

 

Meanwhile, all the collectivists have to do to win is keep stalling, because every 120 days another class of students nationwide are indoctrinated to view the world through a collectivist lens, and conservatives and libertarians are at an otherwise intractable disadvantage: they are wary of intervening with the state because of the precedent it sets, and they cannot win the way they want to (war of ideas with free speech) because they don't have free speech, the institutions are captured and social media has given demagogues a disproportionate means to manipulate the sentiment of the well intended but naive through sophistry.

Before Elon bought X there was no way to counter this.

The UK has been a turn key authoritarian state for a while now, and that key is turning. The more they clamp down, the better, because on the other side of this there may be some fundamental changes that needed to happen.

 

We threw tea into the harbor for less.

 

If the citizens can match the clamp downs with defiance, they might show it's possible to take back a country from collectivist ideologues, and then like dominos...

Edited August 11 by Burncycle360

[Roman Alymov]

Interestingly, some trends mentioned in this interview also exist in modern day Russia (no surprise, as we got generally the same political and economic system). Also the notion of "West going USSR way" is remarkable: actually description of "UK got all sorts of nationalisms except English one" is very much description of USSR (and RF) problem 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 hours ago, Mr King said:

Yeah, while American cities were aflame, peoples homes and business being burnt down and looted, and people were being murdered in the street, expressing solidarity with the perpetrators of these crimes is no big deal.

You're full of it Stuart.

Now write some long diatribe about how I am wrong and it's different and I just dont understand British culture.

Oh, so its ok when British cities are aflame, peoples lives and livelihoods are at risk, and prize twats like Elon Musk are just egging them on like its a little game? This would seem to be perfectly ok in your view?

I dont need to write a long diatribe. You are wrong, and self evidently so. With the utmost respect, which Im not detecting in return btw.

Edited August 11 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

28 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Interestingly, some trends mentioned in this interview also exist in modern day Russia (no surprise, as we got generally the same political and economic system). Also the notion of "West going USSR way" is remarkable: actually description of "UK got all sorts of nationalisms except English one" is very much description of USSR (and RF) problem 

 

David Starkey was once a well reknowned British historian.  If you want to know why he is no longer on British TV, and has effectively turned himself into the new David Irving, you might find the following interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Starkey

In August 2011, Starkey attracted criticism for some comments made on the BBC's Newsnight programme where he was a panel member together with Owen Jones and Dreda Say Mitchell.^[71] The programme discussed the 2011 England riots. Starkey condemned "this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that's been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country", that listening to the voice of the black MP for Tottenham where the riots occurred "you would think he was white" and that "The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture."^[72][73]

The comments were criticised by MPs and some media presenters and described as a "career ending moment".^[72] He was criticised by fellow panellist Dreda Say Mitchell for focusing on "black culture", since "Black communities are not homogenous. So there are black cultures. Lots of different black cultures."^[74] The then-leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, spoke about Starkey's remarks, saying that "they are racist comments, frankly".^[73] The author Toby Young, blogging in the Telegraph, defended Starkey by saying that Starkey had not been talking about black culture in general.^[75] The Spectator columnist Rod Liddle argued in support of the remarks.^[76] Jones described the comments as "one of the ugliest episodes of the backlash".^[77] Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Starkey argued his views had been distorted, he referred only to a "particular sort" of "black culture", and that the "black educationalists" Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh^[78] supported the substance of his Newsnight comments.^[79]

The BBC received more than 700 complaints (and broadcast regulator Ofcom a further 103) about the comments. A petition to demand a public apology from the BBC attracted more than 3,600 signatures.^[80][81] Ofcom deemed the comments to have been part of a "serious and measured discussion" and took no action, and Starkey described the reaction as "hysteria about race".^[80][82]

In the aftermath of the Newsnight broadcast, 102 university historians wrote an open letter that demanded Starkey no longer be described as a "historian" on anything but his specialist subject, the Tudors.^[83] The letter stated that "[h]is crass generalisations about black culture and white culture as oppositional, monolithic entities demonstrate a failure to grasp the subtleties of race and class that would disgrace a first-year history undergraduate." The letter also criticised his supposed "lack of professionalism" and "some of the worst practices of an academic" in shouting down, belittling, and mocking, opposing views, rather than meeting them with eviden

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 hours ago, R011 said:

I'm pretty sure people like George Galloway and his ilk were posting in support of American rioters, not just peaceful BLM protesters.  I doubt any major city US police chiefs were asking for their extradition.

If America wants to extradite him, im perfectly down with that. Ive never been a fan of Galloway, so if they were to do him for sedition, Id ben entirely on board with it. But maybe they didnt ask for extradition, simply because they didnt recognise his existence.

Let me point out there is a difference between George Galloway, politician and professional gobshite whom shits his copybook with the regularlity of a 1 year old shitting his nappies, and Elon Musk, one of the most powerful and richest men in America, and whom become overnight possibly the most influential media baron since William Randolph Hearst. Whom himself was not above meddling in politics when it suited him, and similarly politicians bent over backwards to accomodate.

Looked at another way, George Galloway has 735000 followers on Twitter. Elon Musk has 193 million. A post Musk took down after half an hour had more people reading it than Galloway has followers. Stop and think about the influence that means, and stop and think how completely and totally unaccountable he is to any Government or election box or even any law enforcement. Because America refuses to acknowledge how damaging spreading of disinformation and sedition (which is what it amounted to) can be.

If you are ok with that, then fair enough. Im not, and neither is anyone that thinks about this stuff for far too long should be ok with it.