Murray Armstrong

Author and retired journalist.

[alan rusbridger @arusbridger]

"We have, through recent history, had the Hearsts, Beaverbrooks and Northcliffes who sought to bend public opinion to their will. This week the New York Times even reported that the arch-propagandist Rupert Murdoch was trying to rejig his family arrangements so that—even after death—his media companies would continue to blast his brand of conservativism at the public. A new kind of post-mortem politics.

But Musk potentially eclipses them all because of the sheer scale of X—with around 360m users—and because Musk could, if he wished, act covertly. No-one need know.

Algorithms are trade secrets, which means they are utterly opaque. We can guess at what they’re doing, but we only know what’s happened if someone in the company leaks documents or talks to the press.

Laws may in the future provide some pathways to allow regulators and academics to audit these algorithms and come up with methods to determine if they are neutral and fair, but that’s a slow process and doesn’t help us in situations like this, where Musk could conceivably slow/shut down left-wing voices on Twitter long enough to swing an election.

https://t.co/CitSIDNXWb

[priveteye @dickbyrn]

@haveigotnews You are getting more "daily mail reader " everyday

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

I have chipped in to support @hopenothate's General Election campaign. Can you chip into the fighting fund to increase the pressure too? https://t.co/Fnw6A4JxHK

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

Starmer has now made it clear: he intends to govern on behalf of the rich https://t.co/CM3wYXZcj7

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Sunak says 'bring back National Service'. I say bring back secure well-paid jobs, final salary pensions, union rights, properly-funded NHS and social care, free tuition and student grants, affordable rail fares and social housing.

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

Charity regulator is failing to hold climate denial charity to account. Please donate https://t.co/qGrd4OLdyQ via @goodlawproject

[alan rusbridger @arusbridger]

Angela Rayner doesn’t have expensive accountants. But she does have 12 - twelve ! - Greater Manchester Police officers on her case. I think we all know what’s going on here. My column. https://t.co/oyIPRFO5T7

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

Rishi Sunak wants to ban our GPs from being able to sign us off when we're sick! Sign the petition now and demand these dangerous new plans are dropped. https://t.co/mill92MkuN

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

Hey. @hopenothate's State of HATE 2024 report is available now. It's the most comprehensive and analytical guide to the state of far-right extremism in Britain today: https://t.co/nKV5mO9XY0

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

I’m proud to stand with @hopenothate in the fight against the far-right. Join me and support a safer, more inclusive future for all: https://t.co/FPqvQxEH9c

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

Michelle Mone has admitted that she lied to the media over her links to a PPE firm. Enough is enough, it's time those in power put an end to this sordid affair. Sign the petition now and demand Mone is expelled from the House of Lords: https://t.co/U6Lvn2zB7b

[Anita Mureithi @anitamureithii]

Bosses at St Andrews university have been accused of fuelling racist abuse against their colleague, Stella Maris, who was attacked for condemning Israel https://t.co/yRIiNWuHka

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray ask a series of damning questions:

How is it possible that an obviously faked video – of a crowd supposedly chanting 'Gas the Jews' in Sydney – was repeatedly and uncritically flagged as a real antisemitic incident by politicians and the establishment media?

Why did the New South Wales Police need a 100-day investigation to confirm that the video was faked when it was obvious to any observer?

How is it that the organisation that filmed the original video on which the fake chants were overlaid, the Australian Jewish Association, which refused to hand over the original footage to police, has not been investigated or charged with a criminal offence?

And why was one of the very few journalists who investigated the film and showed it was a fake, Antoinette Lattouf, sacked by the Australian Broadcasting Company?

It is almost as if there is conspiracy by western establishments – politicians, the media, the police – to mislead western publics so that they focus on an exaggerated threat of antisemitism and miss an all-too-obvious genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza with full western complicity to keep it top-dog in the oil-rich Middle East.

Craig Murray's post can be read here:
https://t.co/Cz0c0LBdsb

[Murray Armstrong @MurrayArmstron3]

Reinstate UNRWA Palestinian Aid https://t.co/T1pJXPN7c7 via @UKChange

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

UNRWA is separate from the UN’s main refugee agency, the UNHCR, and deals only with Palestinian refugees.

Although Israel does not want you to know it, the reason for there being two UN refugee agencies is because Israel and its western backers insisted on the division back in 1948.

Why? Because Israel was afraid of the Palestinians falling under the responsibility of the UNHCR’s forerunner, the International Refugee Organisation. The IRO was established in the immediate wake of the Second World War in large part to cope with the millions of European Jews fleeing Nazi atrocities.

Israel did not want the two cases treated as comparable, because it was pushing hard for Jewish refugees to be settled on lands from which it had just expelled Palestinians. Part of the IRO’s mission was to seek the repatriation of European Jews. Israel was worried that very principle might be used both to deny it the Jews it wanted to colonise Palestinian land and to force it to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes.

So in a real sense, UNRWA is Israel’s creature: it was set up to keep the Palestinians a case apart, an anomaly...

Israel’s efforts to get rid of UNRWA are not new. They date back many years. For a number of reasons, the UN refugee agency is a thorn in Israel’s side – and all the more so in Gaza.

Not least, it has provided a lifeline to Palestinians there, keeping them fed and cared for, and providing jobs to many thousands of local people in a place where unemployment rates are among the highest in the world.

It has invested in infrastructure like hospitals and schools that make life in Gaza more bearable, when Israel’s goal has long been to make the enclave uninhabitable.

UNRWA’s well-run schools, staffed by local Palestinians, teach the children their own history, about where their grandparents once lived, and of Israel’s campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing against them. That runs directly counter to the infamous Zionist slogan about the Palestinians’ identity-less future: “The old will die and the young forget.”

But UNRWA’s role is bigger than that. Uniquely, it is the sole agency unifying Palestinians wherever they live, even when they are separated by national borders and Israel’s fragmentation of the territory it controls.

UNRWA brings Palestinians together even when their own political leaders have been manipulated into endless factionalism by Israel’s divide and rule policies: Hamas is nominally in charge in Gaza, while Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah pretends to run the West Bank.

In addition, UNRWA keeps alive the moral case for a Palestinian right of return – a principle recognised in international law but long ago abandoned by western states.

Even before October 7, UNRWA had become an obstable that needed removing if Israel was ever to ethnically cleanse Gaza. That is why Israel has repeatedly lobbied to stop the biggest donors, especially the US, funding UNRWA.

Back in 2018, for example, the refugee agency was plunged into an existential crisis when President Donald Trump acquiesced to Israeli pressure and cut all its funding. Even after the decision was reversed, the agency has been limping along financially.

You can read more from my latest article In waging war on the UN refugee agency, the West is openly siding with Israeli genocide here:
https://t.co/31iUb2ZLUd

[Pete Wishart @PeteWishart]

The ‘media feeding frenzy’ as I described it on Good Morning Scotland this morning is now getting totally out of control. These were the people who led Scotland through the pandemic, keeping Scotland safe, following set guidelines. It’s becoming embarrassing now.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

I have rarely felt more ashamed of my country, both government and opposition, not just for tolerating but for actively enabling this daily mass-murder of terrified, trapped, unarmed civilians, shot down in cold blood because our politicians are either massively ignorant or actively hostile to the Palestinians and their cause. Shame on you @RishiSunak, @Keir_Starmer, @grantshapps & the rest of you who have so badly lost your moral bearings.

[Nicola Sturgeon @NicolaSturgeon]

Statement re UK Covid Inquiry:

I do not intend to give a running commentary on the ongoing Inquiry. Instead, out of respect to all those impacted by the pandemic, I will answer questions directly and openly when I give evidence at the end of this month

However, in light of recent coverage, there are certain points I feel it important to make clear.

Contrary to the impression given in some coverage, the Inquiry does have messages between me and those I most regularly communicated with through informal means.

Although these had not been retained on my own device, I was able to obtain copies which I submitted to the Inquiry last year.

To be clear, I conducted the Covid response through formal processes from my office in St Andrews House, not through WhatsApp or any other informal messaging platform. I was not a member of any WhatsApp groups. The number of people I communicated with through informal messaging at all was limited.

Also, any handwritten notes made by me were passed to my private office to be dealt with and recorded as appropriate.

Throughout the entire process, I acted in line with Scottish Government policy.

I did my level best to lead Scotland through the pandemic as safely as possible - and shared my thinking with the country on a daily basis. I did not get every decision right - far from it - but I was motivated only, and at all times, by the determination to keep people as safe as possible.

[Jessica Simor KC @JMPSimor]

Please make this go viral. It’s never been articulated better than this.