Britain, Government, Internet, National Security, Politics, Society, Technology

Put social media bosses in the dock

INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Intro: Lies and disinformation on social media is fuelling violence and the breakdown of society

The violent thugs and bigots rampaging through the streets of UK towns and cities in the dreadful days since the Southport killing of three young children deserve severe punishment for their appalling crimes.

The giant businesses that enable the lies and exaggerations that fuel the riots should also be in the dock – as should the people who own them.

For the online anonymity they facilitate allows anyone in the world the chance to say anything they want, however incendiary, and to escape responsibility.

Built into the internet from its inception decades ago, anonymity is hugely profitable for tech billionaires, but the horrendous price for this free-for-all is paid by the rest of us: mostly law-abiding, peaceful people who respect the truth. Internet anonymity is the default setting when you set up an email address or a social media account. You can pretend to be anyone, anywhere.

The anarchy and chaos unleashed after Southport highlights the danger. An anonymous account on X (formerly Twitter) called Europe Invasion first spread the incendiary lie that the suspect in the stabbing case was a Muslim immigrant. That post – completely invented – was viewed a staggering six million times.

We have no idea who is behind Europe Invasion, with its relentless and misleading crimes, and doom-laden commentary about ethnic strife. It gives no contact details or any other explicit clues about its funding, staff, location, or aims.

For those who have spent decades dealing with Russian disinformation, it may well smell and look like a Kremlin propaganda outlet in an attempt to sow dissension and mistrust in Western societies – a Russian tactic for many years.

Moscow has unwitting accomplices. Look at the man in charge of X, Elon Musk. A self-declared “free speech absolutist”, Musk closed the departments responsible for dealing with disinformation when he first acquired Twitter. And he has made it far harder to report abuse. The result has been to intensify the toxic mischief coursing through the veins of our democracy.

When Musk took-over the ailing Twitter platform two years ago, accounts with verifiable owners still benefited from a “blue tick” – an award which prevented pranksters and fraudsters impersonating public figures, mainstream media outlets, and businesses. Not any more.

One of Musk’s first moves was to offer blue ticks to anyone willing to pay for them.

That’s why, at a cursory glance, Europe Invasion looks like a regular media outlet – with the “blue tick” stamp of authenticity for which someone, somewhere, has presumably paid. Musk has also lifted the ban Twitter had imposed on such divisive figures as the far-Right firebrand Tommy Robinson who has been blamed for helping fuel violent disorder with his social media posts.

Musk contributes directly to the toxic atmosphere he has helped create. Adding insult to injury he is now embroiled in a war of words with Sir Keir Starmer saying that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain.

The sensible citizens of our land will conclude Musk is not just the wealthiest man in the world, but also the silliest. He knows nothing about this country – and is not ashamed to show it. But among his 200 million followers there will be many who believe him, with untold consequences for this country’s image abroad, and stability at home.

There is even a greater danger to our national security. The internet is the central nervous system of our civilisation, used in everything from finance to health care and transport.

It is horribly susceptible and vulnerable to carelessness (as we saw recently in the massive global disruption from a faulty software update). Yet it is being attacked by malevolent state actors such as Russia and China.

The reason for our plight is simple: greed. Checking identities costs money. So too does nailing lies, running a proper complaints system, and installing proper security.

For the tech giants, it is far simpler to let chaos rip, and watch the profits roll in.

Yet the answer lies in our own hands – and those of our elected politicians in parliament.

As a first step, our regulators and lawmakers should demand that tech bosses immediately remove material that constitutes incitement to riot. Unless they do that, they are aiding and abetting serious crimes.

The tech giants’ titanic lobbying efforts have cowed politicians for years. Curb the internet and you hamper innovation, the argument goes.

But the price now is too high. An American court has just handed down a landmark ruling that the online search giant Google is a monopoly that systematically crushes its rivals.

We need the same spirit here in the UK, with the media regulator OFCOM and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) working together to curb the power of these monstrous companies.

They behave like medieval monarchs, treating us as their digital serfs. It is high time to remove their neo-feudal protections and privileges and make them legally liable for the extraordinary harm they do.

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Britain, Government, Politics, Society

Dealing with the rioters, and their grievances

BRITAIN

THE RIOTING we have witnessed in recent days including attacks on police, the looting, vandalism, and other scenes of anarchy have all been deeply shocking and reprehensible.

Just when many thought the knucklehead mobs spreading chaos across the country couldn’t sink any lower, reels and images showed they set fire to a library in a deprived area of Liverpool.

But the deliberate and wanton destruction of a sanctuary where adults and young people could escape into a world of literature and knowledge is singularly depressing – especially as this ‘safe place’ also operated as a food bank.

The arsonists must have known the most vulnerable would be worst affected, yet they torched the building anyway. It is beyond comprehension and beneath contempt.  

Rioters are not the only ones shamed by the events of recent days. Social media agitators have fanned the flames of discord with lies and misinformation.

They include the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Christoper Yaxley-Lennon) who is currently spouting hatred from a five-star hotel in Cyprus. Nigel Farage MP and anti-woke actor Laurence Fox have also been complicit in giving credence to conspiracy theories around the appalling Southport murders of three children attending a Taylor Swift workshop which began the cycle of violence.

As figures of considerable influence, they have a duty not to inflame an already incendiary situation – one they miserably failed to honour. But most disturbingly, a week on from the Southport horror, unrest has been growing rather than receding. A frenzied and vicious attack on a hotel housing migrants in Rotherham was especially violent, with police heavily outnumbered.

Sir Keir Starmer has had little to offer but tired and lacklustre platitudes. It should come as no surprise that his approval rating has dropped significantly in the past fortnight. Scraping the planned care cap, abolishing the winter fuel payments for OAPs (other than those on pension credit), and announcing a swathe of tax increases to deal with a £22billion “secret black hole” in the nation’s finances have contributed to this.

The handling of his first major test as PM has been unimpressive.

Sir Keir characterises this outbreak of lawlessness as being organised and led by “mobile” far-Right groups travelling between flashpoint towns fomenting division and violent disorder. Yet, this is not borne out by evidence suggesting most of those charged with public order offences have been local.

This is not to say far-Right elements are not pouring fuel on the flames, but they are exploiting a deeper grievance.

In these mainly poorer working-class towns – Hartlepool, Blackpool, Rotherham – many believe they have been disenfranchised by the political elite, particularly over mass immigration.

They feel their communities are changing without consultation, see public services at breaking point, and fear the housing crisis will never be solved if the influx continues.

Through Brexit, for which most of them voted, border control was meant to be regained. Instead, net migration has reached record levels. None of this can excuse the sort of violence we have seen, but it is on such alarm, fear, and disaffection that extremism thrives.

As a London lawyer brought up in affluent Surrey and surrounded by Metropolitan liberals, Keir Starmer little understands the struggles of those living in these flashpoint towns and cities.

But he is Prime Minister now. Coming down hard on the symptoms of these disturbances without addressing what lies beneath them would be a very dangerous mistake.

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Britain, Government, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Politics, United States

Iran vows revenge on Israel

MIDDLE EAST

Intro: The temperature in the Middle East is rising by the day. Israeli air strikes in Lebanon and in Tehran claimed the lives of a senior military commander from Hezbollah and that of the political leader of Hamas. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader has vowed to inflict “severe punishment” on Israel. An all-out regional war looks ever likely, but the power vacuum in Washington DC is hardly helping matters

THE escalation has started. Today, the world stands on the brink of major war. Israel has retaliated following rocket attacks launched from Lebanon that killed twelve children in the Golan Heights. First, an Israeli rocket attack killed a senior military commander from Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut. Then, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas, in a precision air strike on a Tehran apartment building.

These two surgical killings mark a major upsurge of Israel’s twin conflicts with its neighbours – Lebanon to the north, and the Palestinians to the south. They effectively end any chance of a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza.

Now Iran, which backs both armed groups, is seeking retribution and revenge. Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, will regard Israel’s elimination of Haniyeh – on Iranian soil – as a deep humiliation that can be salved only with a confrontation that is bound to claim yet more Israeli lives.

Khamenei, who had met the Hamas leader only a few hours earlier, described Haniyeh as “a dear guest in our home” before adding: “We consider his revenge as our duty.”

The political leader of Hamas had flown to Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. In a region of the Middle East where “face” and reputation are valued so highly, the Iranian state knows it has little choice but to respond in kind.

The grim likelihood of war spreading across the Middle East and beyond has also increased thanks to the United States’ apparent lack of interest.

The White House seems disinclined to enforce the “pax Americana” that has protected the West and its interests for decades. As President Joe Biden prepares to leave office, it is widely viewed that Mr Biden has become a lame duck who will doze through the final months of his presidency.

The second air strike – presumably masterminded by Israel’s intelligence service Mossad from Jerusalem – took place at 2am in Tehran.

But it was still the middle of the evening in Washington DC and there should have been plenty of time for the White House to react.

The fact that neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris deigned to speak suggests that Washington is either asleep, on summer holiday, on autopilot, or unwilling to act in an election year, all of which are equally dangerous.  

What next? After the nine-month siege of Gaza, some will say that Hamas can no longer be capable of inflicting much more pain on Israel.

But, based in Lebanon to Israel’s north, Hezbollah was able to fight Israel to a stalemate as recently as 2006.

The group still has a large arsenal of Iranian supplied rockets and drones.

It appears likely that Iran, too, could launch cruise and ballistic missiles as well as kamikaze drones at Israel in a repeat of April’s Operation True Promise (a coordinated attack of more than 300 missiles: itself a retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus).

It is Iran’s proxy forces throughout the rest of the Middle East that make international conflict so terrifyingly plausible.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen are stretching the West’s military resources in the Red Sea by launching drone attacks on commercial shipping and directly attacking vessels from the U.S. and Royal Navies.

The Houthis have also sworn to launch air strikes against Israel itself, a response to Jerusalem’s attacks on Houthi-held territory in Yemen.

Then there are Iran’s Shi’ite allies in Iraq and Syria, who have recent history of attacking the few remaining American air bases in the region.

For Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, perhaps he has concluded that Israel can cope with any escalation of the conflicts now threatening to engulf his nation.

In attempting to decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is repeating the tactic that saw America successfully neutralise al-Qaeda as a global threat – by hunting down and destroying its leaders.

But Israel, of all countries, should know that wars of attrition are not won by assassinations alone.

Israel killed Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Yassin, as long ago as 2004, yet the Hamas threat grew ever stronger.

The danger for Netanyahu and Israel is that the country could be dragged into a bigger, wider conflagration on many fronts. And if that happens, the ramifications become very hard to predict.

In terms of military resources, Israel – with American backing – seems well placed to survive that conflict.

While U.S. Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, has previously said America wants to cool the temperature in the Middle East, Washington has been resolute in its insistence that the U.S. military would come to Israel’s aid if it was attacked by Iran – as it did when Tehran launched its huge drone and missile strike in April.

However, it remains to be seen how many civilian deaths, and how much economic damage, the Israel public is prepared to endure before ousting Netanyahu and suing for peace.

A widening conflict would leave Britain in an invidious position.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak ordered British jets based in Cyprus to shoot down Iranian drones heading for Israel in a show of support for America and Israel. Sir Keir Starmer is likely to do the same.

Yet would Britain put boots on the ground if America and Israel called for military help? Surely that would make Britain, and British interests overseas, a target for Iran’s allies?

Where would our involvement leave British relations with our European neighbours – some of whom have been vociferous in their support for Palestinian civilians caught up in the Gaza conflict?

And how would it affect our relationship with NATO ally Turkey, which has been increasingly strident in its support for Hamas, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even threatening to send troops to Palestine to support Hamas.

Russia’s involvement in the conflict should be considered, too.

Moscow is a long-term ally of Iran, which has provided drones and missiles for its war in Ukraine and it has a major military presence in Syria, providing Russia’s only military base on the Mediterranean.

The Kremlin also remains a master of destabilising tactics, using social media outlets to spread rumours and deploying “useful idiots” in rival states to foment social unrest and division.

The temperature in the Middle East is rising by the day. The usual mechanisms for de-escalation and negotiation seem dangerously absent.

How, or where, will it end?

The power vacuum in Washington isn’t helping matters.

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