But this new antisemitism – the use of “antisemitism” to silence dissent, by calling everything anti-Semitic, weakens our ability to combat real anti-Semitic racism. When everyone is an anti-Semite no one is an anti-Semite. Reasonable people who can see through the political weaponisation of this language begin to dismiss – as I have been guilty of doing – almost every claim of antisemitism. We become deaf to a terminology that, ever since Auschwitz, should ring immediate alarm bells the moment we hear it. “Antisemitism,” thanks to pro-government media outlets...
Dark Money and the BBC’s Sleight of Hand
Yesterday, at long last, the directors at the BBC caved in to public pressure and called David Duguid – the Scottish Conservative and Unionist MP for Banff & Buchan – onto the show to answer some not-so tough questions. Considering the charges currently being laid against his party; that he and others received potentially illegal donations from a network of political associations set up and used so as to obfuscate the sources of the money, this was a brilliant opportunity for Gary Robertson to grill Mr Duguid and shed some much-needed light on this growing political scandal.
Why the BBC is Killing the Dark Money Story
If the details of the Brexit dark money story are proven, the outlook for the British government is dire – if not terminal. It will prove beyond doubt what an increasing number have come to suspect; that Brexit was never about returning sovereignty to the UK, but that senior members of the Conservative Party – including members of the government – have collaborated with a foreign power – Russia – to destabilise the United States and the European Union and assisted in a project of recalibrating the international geopolitical balance of power in Russia’s favour.
Normalisation
This comes about through a process known as normalisation, in which the seemingly absurd is made acceptable over a protracted period of time. Wealthy and powerful corporate agendas, either by ownership or by influence, are packaged by the media and sold to an increasingly docile and depoliticised public – steadily changing public opinion. Ultimately this shift in opinion creates a rising political demand not being met by the establishment political parties.
Join the March to Independence
At Dumfries on Saturday the good people of the town who chose the union and lent their vote to the Tories got to see first-hand the good nature of the Yes campaign. It filled up their hotels and restaurants, the chippers were queued out, and the pubs were jammers. They saw smiles, they heard laughter, they say people from all over Scotland come to their town, and they were included in these people’s courageous vision for Scotland – and for Dumfries. And up at the Burns monument in their town they saw their unionism; fleg-waving nationalism, complete with Nazi salutes.
We Cannot Trust the Media
The British Broadcasting Corporation is great at what it does. Our problem was that for so long very many of us didn’t know what its true purpose was. It was never intended to inform us – it is there to form us, and the same can be said for the overwhelming majority of the rest of the Scottish media. When we have news programmes, newspapers, and journalists insinuating that the former leader of the party in government in Holyrood is working for the Kremlin...
Al-Assad: Britain Getting its Story Straight
A staged gas attack provides the US and its allies a justification for military intervention in a conflict in which they have strategic interests. The British may be telling the truth, but their outrageous and criminal behaviour in other conflicts gives us no reason to trust them. Britain is not the most trustworthy state, and so it is understandable that people will accept Russia’s claims over whatever London has to say.
An Agent of Influence: David Leask’s Job
David Leask’s job isn’t to spot lies. He may want to convince himself that this is what he does for a living, but he’s deluding himself. Mr Leask can’t even spot the lies in his own paper. He hasn’t commented on the astronomical number of retractions The Herald has had to publish in relation to its coverage of the Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon, and the Scottish government (see the pattern?). Retractions on page 12 a week later, as The Herald knows, don’t correct the damage done by a lie published in bold on the front page – and that’s how it works.
Random Public Journal 