Thursday, February 28, 2019

The Importance of Free Speech; everyone is entitled to free speech, silencing people creates martyrs and martyrs create movements, Tommy Robinson’s Panodrama documentary should be shown on the BBC alongside their documentary, de-platforming is always the wrong tactic, the truth will always out



Dear All

Before I get started on today’s post, which is about #panodrama, I want to say something about Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. It seems that Ms. Shiekh has taken the Alex Salmond line on timing of indyref 2. To that end she seems to playing the game as Alex Salmond. Salmond and Shiekh are ‘joined at the hip’ producing his TV show on RT.

At the last General Election, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh was dumped by the people of Ochil and South Perthshire, and to quote Yoda style, ‘her reign, not short enough that was’. Now as Brexit swirls about, she is criticising  the party’s leadership for failing to take action on a future independence referendum.

So, what failure is she talking about?

Failure of Nicola Sturgeon’s government.

Collapse of indy support?

One thing she did get right, is when she said Nicola Sturgeon’s imminent announcements on another vote “have been trailed so often that no-one is taking them seriously now”.

Nicola Sturgeon won’t get a section 30 order from this Westminster parliament currently running, she can only ask. Sturgeon knows that when or if she ever gets one, that is the clock ticking down to the end of her career.

Nicola Sturgeon won’t lead Scotland to independence.

Reading in The National, the Newsquest sop paper for the Nationalists, she took a swipe at the continual delays in her column. Why she has a column in The National is anyone’s guess, but then you could say the same of Mhairi Black or Ian Blackford as well, these people add nothing to the debate on Scotland’s future.

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is no oracle, having watched her in the Commons, it was said she had the nickname ‘tedious’, continually standing up to be called by the Speaker to spout inane drivel.

Sheikh said:

"To paraphrase Theresa May ‘now IS the time’ to be presenting coherent plans and campaigning for change”.

Presumably coherent plans aren’t forthcoming from Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, nor Sturgeon or the rest of the cabal in Edinburgh.

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is out of politics, no loss there.

Now, back to the main issue, you will have seen on the news, and media sites, the undercover operation and sting of Tommy Robertson. His documentary is called Panodrama and I would like you to view, all the way through. In our democracy, it is important to defend free speech, but the problem is that organisations exist attempt to restrict it by threats, violence, intimidation and blackmail. Although politics is seen by many as a dirty business, you simply cannot just focus on them, you have to look at who operates on the fringe, and in the shadows.

I have done a skim of Tommy Robinson’s doc to get a sense of it, to me, the most interesting part wasn’t the exchange between Robinson and John Sweeney. The most important part was the look on the face of the BBC staff as the exchanges continued.

Especially one man who sat in a chair with his head down.

Everyone is entitled to free speech, and the attempts to silence Tommy Robinson have backfired, rather badly, what is better in the boat pissing out, or out the boat pissing in?  At present, Tommy Robinson is moving to new media platforms which won’t get shut down. You may look at Tommy Robinson’s previous history and not feel sympathy for the man, but like anyone else, we expect he is treated fairly. His Court case was a sham, his imprisonment made him a martyr and his expose of the BBC Panorama made him as an investigative journalist.

The attempts to deplatform him were wrong, utterly wrong, you could make the argument if left to his own devices and where he was, he might have hung himself. One thing that John Sweeney appears to suggest is that the entire British system is run by middle class people. He said that the Labour Party hadn’t done their job properly, which I take to mean not enough working class voices in the MP ranks and elsewhere.

Just as you can’t nail jelly to the ceiling, you will never stop free speech, once you recognise that you also recognise that you don’t have to listen to it either.

Finally, if someone would like to do guest posts on the video above on what they thought of the situation presented, then I would like to hear from you. I am basically Looking for two articles, one for the defence (BBC) and one for the prosecution (Tommy Robinson).

Entries to be sent to my hotmail account,  georgelaird@hotmail.com  titled ‘Panodrama’.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

6 comments:

  1. The point is George the social media platforms have decided that he broke their terms and conditions therefore they don't want anything to do with him. I don't think it's a question of free speech they are quite within their rights.

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  2. well said The previous commentator is deluded the social platforms share pornography and paedophilia without batting an eye

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  3. Three problems, Freddy.

    1) T&Cs are meaningless when the various social media companies do not apply them uniformly—so a non-SJW will have a comment deleted or account suspended or banned for behaviours condoned when done by ‘woke’ accounts (e.g. no action was taken against the SJWs tweeting nastily about the Covington kids; Kathy Griffin’s tweet demanding their naming and shaming remains to this day; and Jack Morrissey who tweeted about feeding them into a woodchipper was not even suspended).

    2) While one can argue that an owner should be able to interpret rules on his property as idiosyncratically as he pleases, this argument is weakened given the dominance tech companies have in the delivery of information. E.g. it’s one thing for a nightclub to have a ‘no jeans’ rule applying only to males not observably rich or famous; it’s another when it’s an electricity company or water supplier having such rules.

    3) Given the status of ‘private property’ in Britain and across the West, the concept rings increasingly hollow. Governments mandate what minimum wage employers pay their least skilled employees, whom they can hire and fire, and which customers they must serve. While Sir Edward Coke declared in 1604 that ‘the house of every one is to him as his Castle and Fortress’ and in 1763 Pitt the Elder stated: ‘The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter—all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!’; now 266 powers allow entrance to our homes(*) and police think nothing of barging their way into people’s home without cause, apology or warrant(†).

    (* Snook, Harry. “Crossing the Threshold: 266 ways the State can enter your home.” Centre for Policy Studies, 2007.)
    († “Coventry police tweet pictures of themselves inside unlocked homes to highlight burglary risk.” The Independent, 26 Jan 2016.
    Police officer walks into someone's home in Liverpool,” youtube, 15 Apr 2017.)

    We are also witnessing a phenomenon where private companies increasingly prioritise ideology over profits—rather than cater to the customer and demands of the marketplace, they increasingly attempt to browbeat the customer into an ideological box.

    youtuber, ‘The Alternative Hypothesis’, makes some interesting observations in his June 2018 video, ‘Starbucks Racism’, commenting on Starbucks and Disney/Lucasfilm prioritising virtue-signalling over profit (he references race as it was racial controversies he was commenting on but his point applies to other SJW issues):

    What we’re looking at is ideological capitalism. These companies are willing to lose money to attack whites. This isn’t the sort of banal thing that a lot of people imagine—that companies, ‘Oh, they just cave to PC pressure because they think it will earn them money because they don’t want to be perceived as racist’. No, there was no PC pressure here. There was no PC pressure to have a black lead in “Star Wars” or have feminist girl-power Mary Poppins Jedis running around in “Star Wars”. There was no PC pressure for any of that to happen. These companies go out of their way to do this: knowingly lose money to do this, to push an anti-white Starbucks racist agenda.

    See also the twitter account @WokeCapital, and also this interview with him.

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  4. George to further expound on my previous post Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson ( maybe the former name doesn't sound quite so working class to gull the rubes who follow him) A quick search of the terms and guidelines of the major social media outlets are

    1) twitter " Abusive Behavior

    We believe in freedom of expression and open dialogue, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we prohibit behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.

    Context matters when evaluating for abusive behavior and determining appropriate enforcement actions. Factors we may take into consideration include, but are not limited to whether:

    the behavior is targeted at an individual or group of people;
    the report has been filed by the target of the abuse or a bystander;
    the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.







    Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. Read more about our hateful conduct policy.

    Hateful imagery and display names: You may not use hateful images or symbols in your profile image or profile header. You also may not use your username, display name, or profile bio to engage in abusive behavior, such as targeted harassment or expressing hate towards a person, group, or protected category. "


    2) Facebook

    "
    Hate organisations and their leaders and prominent members

    A hate organisation is defined as:
    Any association of three or more people that is organised under a name, sign or symbol and that has an ideology, statements or physical actions that attack individuals based on characteristics, including race, religious affiliation, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, serious disease or disability."

    3) Paypal
    " Prohibited Activities

    You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:

    violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation.
    relate to transactions involving (a) narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a risk to consumer safety, (b) drug paraphernalia, (c) cigarettes, (d) items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity, (e) stolen goods including digital and virtual goods, (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime, (g) items that are considered obscene, (h) items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction, (i) certain sexually oriented materials or services, (j) ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories, or (k) certain weapons or knives regulated under applicable law."

    Let's not be ingenuous here we know what religous and ethnic group he's targeting, however he's miffed because paypal blocked him therefore it's not easy to skim money from the morons who think he's a poor downtrodden working class guy. It's not as if any of them have the brains to set up a bitcoin account to send donations. I mean free Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Free Tommy Robinson :)

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  5. Hi Freddy

    When you look at who is banning him, time frames, you get a sense of him being de-platformed, this is a free speech issue, the platforms banning him effectively appear to be working together, which suggest co-ordination.

    Why do we give bad rights?

    Because that ensures good people keep theirs.

    George

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  6. The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy



    @glasgow_sugar



    More
    Looks like the @ScotNational has removed the inaccurate Michael Moore 'white slaves' article. https://www.thenational.scot/news/17471066.scots-slave-in-us-filmmaker-michael-moores-family-tree/ … Happy to write a historical piece explaining differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery, @ScotNational Just get in touch.

    ReplyDelete