I'm not a follower of Twitter, in my view it is open to all sorts of abuse and it seems to be yet another bad habit this country has picked up from the USA - despite that, it does have a few twit followers on this bulletin board so I thought it might be a good idea to start a TWIT thread where twits could post various twit comments without clogging up other threads with utter twit nonsense.

By Dan Hodges
9:42AM GMT 25 Nov 2014
The Left's rhetoric has become as toxic as that of the hard-Right

This morning I got up, made myself a cup of tea, got myself a bowl of cereal and logged onto Twitter. That’s how the out of touch, metropolitan media class starts its day.

At the top of my messages was a post from someone called Mike Campbell. To the best of my knowledge I haven’t come across Mike before. We don’t correspond regularly, or follow each other. But according to his biography he's an RMT trade union rep and a socialist.

His message referred to the Guardian columnist and food blogger Jack Monroe. “She didn't tweet about Cameron's son. She tweeted about Cameron. Even you should be able to work that out”, he said.

This was a reference to a tweet Monroe had herself sent as part of the “#CameronMustGo” Twitter campaign. Her tweet read: “Because he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends: “#CameronMustGo”.

When I saw Monroe’s message I thought “that’s horrible”, said so, then carried on working on yesterday’s post about Ukip and their repatriation policy. Then I pottered about a bit, did some work on a book I’m writing, then returned to have another browse on Twitter.

By this point my timeline was filling up with two distinct threads. The first related to my Ukip post. It basically consisted of a few Ukip supporters claiming I’d made up the whole thing, (I didn’t, read the post), and a lot of others coming up with stuff about me being a race traitor, a member of the LibLabCon, and inviting me to combine sex with travel.

The second was from people defending Jack Monroe. They were posting about me being a traitor to the Labour Party, a closet Tory, and comparing me to various intimate parts of the male and female anatomy.

So I leapt into the Twitter mosh pit, and began happily tweeting my responses. After a while, I noticed something weird. The Kippers and the CamMustGoers started to merge. I was literally sending the same responses to both groups of people. “No, I’m not a traitor to my race. I just don’t like racists”. “No, I’m not a traitor to the Labour Party. I just don’t like people who play politics with other people’s dead children”. And then I realised I wasn’t as happy as I thought I was.

I write a lot of critical stuff about Ed Miliband and the Labour Party. And a lot of the people who read it desperately, desperately want them both to prevail at the next election. So when they dish out the “you’re a traitor stuff”, I get it. I don’t think they quite understand what the job of being a political commentator entails, but I used to be a Labour Party member, so I grasp the tribal antipathy.

In fact, I’ve still got a little bit of that tribalism lurking someone deep down inside of me. I must have. Because yesterday, when I saw the Right an the Left engaged in the same desperate attempt to defend the utterly indefensible, I thought to myself: “Hang on. You’re on the Left. Aren’t you supposed to be better than that?”

It would be a stretch for me to claim some of my best friends are Ukip supporters. But I know several people who work in the party who are good, decent, honourable, people. When I went to the party’s conference in Doncaster I met several ordinary Ukip activists who were funny, warm, generous and clearly believe passionately in their party and its cause.

But I’m not going to lie. I think Ukip is a thoroughly racist, thoroughly prejudiced, thoroughly reactionary party. And I think the majority of its core supporters reflect that. Racism. Islamophobia. Homophobia. Misogyny. Rightly or wrongly, those are the values I associate with Ukip.

It may sound ludicrously simplistic, but until recently I genuinely thought people on the Right were the bad guys and the people on the Left were the good guys. In my mind’s eye, the Left still retained a semblance of moral authority. Yes, the Right were good at running the economy and taking the hard choices and all the usual “firm but fair” clichés. But it was still the Left who had cornered the market on compassion and fairness and basic humanity.

Then I saw Jack Monroe’s tweet. Or, even more tellingly, the response of the Left to Jack Monroe’s tweet.

The Left is losing its way. Not in an “Ed Miliband isn’t going to win Stockton South”, kind of way. In a “where the hell did we put that moral compass of ours?” kind of way.

When people can’t look at a tweet publicly taunting a man over the death of his six-year-old son and realise there is something deeply, horribly wrong, then they have a problem. If they can’t understand that a tweet like that transcends the most basic laws of human decency, they have a problem. And if they can’t simply and unequivocally condemn that tweet, without constructing straw men, throwing deflections and trying to draw spurious moral parallels, then they have a serious, serious problem.

That is the Left’s problem this morning. “Oh what, the whole Left?” someone will no doubt ask, facetiously. No, not all of the Left. In the same way not all of Ukip’s supporters advocate repatriation, or stigmatising people on trains who don’t speak English, or whipping up moral panics about Romanians. But enough. Too many.

Yesterday, the organisers of the #CameronMustGo campaign were boasting of their success. Their message was being tweeted 100,000 times a day, they claimed. So where were the tweets of condemnation for Jack Monroe? Where were the angry voices denouncing her for hijacking their campaign, or distorting its message? The answer, of course, is nothing had been hijacked or distorted. Cameron has to go. By any means necessary.

Now the sharks of the Right are circling themselves. Jack Monroe is receiving her own vile online abuse. In response her abusers will be abused. And the whole tawdry, vicious spiral will continue.

Perhaps I’m being naive. Maybe the Left never occupied the moral high ground. When I worked for the Labour Party maybe I was one of the people who unwittingly helped negotiate its surrender.

I don’t know. What I do know is some of the stuff the Left is coming out with at the moment is as toxic and malign and devoid of basic humanity as anything I’ve ever seen from the hard-Right. Both are now equally blinded by their own brand of narrow, ideological hatred.

So let me respond to Mike Campbell. Jack Monroe did tweet about David Cameron’s son, Mike. The words “he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric” are the giveaway.

You’re an RMT official and a socialist. She was wrong. Wasn’t she?

What is a troll?

Chris Carson

Sounds like anyone who disagree's with another persons opinion.


wtf?

No somebody who follows someone around on a social platform making nasty spiteful and aggressive comments after another has posted.

Sometimes it can be of a sexual nature.

Who's after your ass gf?


Hint...it's not me sweety!

Errrr Mike740, Goldfinger, Mick TARQUIN (don't you just love that) Kipper, Disco Dave, Purple etc etc etc LOL!!!

THURSDAY 11 DECEMBER 2014 India , UK
Unmasked: the man behind top Islamic State Twitter account


The most influential pro-Islamic State Twitter account to be followed by foreign jihadis - Shami Witness - is shut down after a Channel 4 News investigation uncovers the identity of the man behind it


He spent his mornings, afternoons and evenings sending thousands of tweets of propaganda about the Islamic State militant group, acting as the leading conduit of information between jihadis, supporters, and recruits.

His tweets, written under the name Shami Witness, were seen two million times each month, making him perhaps the most influential Islamic State Twitter account, with over 17,700 followers.


Two thirds of all foreign fighters on Twitter followed him. When a fighter's Twitter account is suspended, he often promoted the new one and urged people to follow it.

He spoke to British jihadis regularly, before they leave to join the Islamic State, after they arrived, and if they died he praised them as martyrs.

He has until now been able to remain anonymous, avoiding questions about his motives and his central role in the Islamic State's propaganda war, but a Channel 4 News investigation can today reveal that the man operating the account is called Mehdi and he is an executive in Bangalore working for an Indian conglomerate.

Channel 4 News has chosen not to reveal his full name as he says his life would be in danger if his true identity was made public.

Mehdi said he would have gone to join Islamic State himself, but his family were financially dependent on him: "If I had a chance to leave everything and join them I might have.. my family needs me here."

On his Facebook pages he regularly shares jokes, funny images and talks about superhero movies, posting pictures of pizza dinners with friends, and Hawaiian parties at work.

Elsewhere on Facebook there are indications of his Islamist ideology, in conversations about Libya and Egyptian uprisings.

After being contacted by Channel 4 News, Mehdi shut down the Shami Witness account.

Social media conflict
A recent report by the Brookings Institute found social media to be one of the key organizational strengths of the Islamic State, finding that it uses such channels "to spread and legitimise IS's ideology, activities, and objectives, and to recruit and acquire international support."

The man behind Shami Witness posted thousands of updates to the @ShamiWitness Twitter account every month, usually from his mobile phone.

Using the @ShamiWitness account he five times tweeted the video of the execution of US aid worker Peter Kassig, and dozens of Syrian soldiers within minutes of it being uploaded to the internet.

"May allah guide, protect, strengthen and expand the Islamic State ... Islamic State brought peace, autonomy, zero corruption, low crime-rate", he wrote on Twitter in November.

Mehdi said of Iftikhar Jaman, one of the British jihadists from Portsmouth killed fighting for Islamic State, that: "you bros [brothers] talked the talk, walked the walk".

And he said to British fighter Mehdi Hassan "May Allah give you brothers decisive victory there". Hassan later died fighting in Kobane.

To another British fighter he said: "may Allah reward you" and quoted one British fighter's suggested that the rebel Islamic Front poses a greater risk to the Islamic State than the secularist rebels of the Free Syrian Army.

ShamiWitness seemed to express glee at the deaths and rapes of Kurdish fighters on Twitter, but later said that this comment was taken out of context.

He had written and later deleted the tweet where he said: "@ArjDnn I should thank PKK for recruiting female fighters, specially the ones caught alive by rebels. lol".

But in his real life, he had spoken out against rape on Facebook.


— Shami Witness (@ShamiWitness) December 10, 2014

By Agency
9:34PM GMT 06 Jan 2015
A Labour councillor has been suspended after she tweeted a parody of a Conservative poster which had been doctored to include an image of a Nazi death camp

A Labour councillor has been suspended by the party for sharing on social media a parody of a Conservative election poster doctored to include an image of a Nazi death camp.

Rosemary Healy, who represents the Mapperley ward on Nottingham City Council, insisted she had not spotted what the picture was of when she sent it on to more than 1,500 followers on Twitter and expressed "profound apologies".

But the party confirmed that the council's executive assistant for community protection had been suspended amid closer-than-ever scrutiny of politicians' internet postings in the run-up to May's general elections.

The original post shared by Ms Healy was an altered version of a Tory poster - the original of which was mocked after it emerged the photo of a country road featured above the slogan "Let's stay on the road to a stronger economy" was of one in Germany, not the UK.

It was posted by the @ThomasPride account but replaced the road with a picture of the railway lines leading into the notorious Auschwitz camp where more than a million people - almost all Jews - died during the Second World War.

"The new Tory campaign poster featuring a German road's a bit controversial" the post quipped - adding the slogan "more people on zero hours, more tax cuts for the rich, no more NHS".

Ms Healy quickly deleted the Tweet and posted: "Profound apologies for that retweet which was a genuine mistake and would never have been retweeted had I recognised it for what it was."

The Conservative group leader on Nottingham City Council, Cllr Georgina Culley, told the website: "This trivialises the horrors of the holocaust and I think Councillor Healy and her party should be ashamed.

"The city council should also act to distance itself from the perpetuation of these tweets, such remarks are offensive and a public representative should know better."

The user of the Thomas Pride account defended the image against complaints from others on the social media network that it was "deeply ignorant" and "belittles the Holocaust" - insisting it was legitimate satire and that he was of Polish descent.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11341057/US-military-twitter-account-hacked-by-Isil-live.html