With genuine reluctance, I find myself obliged to ban Larry from St Louis from commenting on this blog.
I am extremely happy for people to comment on this blog who disagree with my views. It makes it much more interesting for everybody. I wish more people who disagree would comment.
But Larry has a different agenda. His technique is continually to accuse me of holding opinions which I do not in fact hold, and which he thinks will call my judgement into doubt.
Take this comment posted by Larry at 9.35 am today:
I’ve re-read your post on the Russian spies, and once again you’ve proven to be a complete dumbass.
I predicted Russia claiming (in some minor way) those idiots. You didn’t. You thought it was a conspiracy.
You’ve once again self-indicted.
In fact my view on the Russian spies was the exact opposite of what Larry claims it was. As I posted:
I don’t have any difficulty in believing that the FBI really have discovered a colony of Russian sleeper spies in the United States.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/those_russian_s.html#comments
This is not Larry being mistaken – remember he claimed he had just re-read my posting. It is rather indicative of a very deliberate technique he has used scores of times, that of claiming I hold an opinion which he believes will devalue my other arguments in the mind of other readers, when I do not in fact hold that opinion.
He most often – indeed daily – does this with reference to 9/11. He tries to divert almost every thread on to the topic of 9/11 and to insinuate that I am among those who believe that 9/11 was “an inside job”. In fact, I am not of that opinion and never have been.
I have put up with this now for months, but Larry’s activities have become so frenetic and are so counter-productive to informed debate, I am not prepared to put up with it any more. I am also deeply sucpicious of the fact that he is able to spend more time on this blog than me, and to post right around the clock (often as with this one at 9.35am – think about it – what time is that in the US?).
Anyway, sorry Larry, your derailing days are over.
.
StefZ – there is http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post.html if you do fancy it. From January to earlier this month, good grief … though I don’t know if you’ll find much energy left for it (I certainly don’t have any, but it was never really my thing anyway).
Free speech … it could be argued as such (and usually is in such situations), but I’d take your main point that it was tending to put others off exercising theirs. He’s not the only person who might want it.
To go backthread a little; the meaning of ‘troll’, as I’m familiar with it, is that it’s a person who cannot be dealt with constructively, someone who will generate endless amounts of noise for purposes that have nothing to do with the free exchange of ideas. Someone with whom there is nothing to do except give up, if you place any value on your own side of the conversation. Ah. Which leads me to stumble onto The Point – Larry made it obnoxiously clear that he didn’t value anyone else here ?
There _are_ an infinite number of monkeys out there, and life’s too short.
Larry: “By the way, why don’t you think Obama and his chief of staff go after the 911 conspirators?”
Can’t make head nor tail of this at all. Perhaps we’re not supposed to. Is there a brain in the Larry bot?
The Gripe say:
Re: voting on Larry’s continued access
” B****r that, for too liberal for me. It’s Craig’s blog, so what he says goes.”
Sorry sir, I forgot, we’re all here to say “yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir.”
I’ll try to remember.
” B****r that, for too liberal for me. It’s Craig’s blog, so what he says goes.”
“Sorry sir, I forgot, we’re all here to say “yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir.”
You haven’t been reading it, have you ?
para. 2 above, “I wish more people who disagree would comment.”
So you’re only following orders after all.
Incidentally, if the Romans weren’t enough to pollute the Vital Fluids you’re so bothered about, after sending a whole occupying army and controlling the whole continent for hundreds of years, I can’t see what chance anybody else has got.
Joseph says:
“Earlier, you had said that you were proud to be able to trace your descent from the Normans. So on your own analysis you are not therefore “indigenous British”, and should therefore fuck off back across the Channel without further delay.”
Oh dear, I seem to have stirred some shit, or do I mean shits?
What’s sad about this is that it suggests they don’t teach anyone anything any longer in British schools other than political correct hate speech.
I mean, otherwise, people would know the meaning of fairly common terms such as “race”, “indigenous”, etc. Then they would make silly, muddled and ill-tempered statement such as the one I have quoted.
Given Larry’s reappearance on this blog and the current abysmal standard of comments, Craig, please consider editing comments before publishing them. Juan Cole for one seems to do this very successfully so that the comments on his blog represent a range of views and are of a high standard. Most readers presumably are here to be informed about foreign policy and human rights – not to have to wade through off-topic comments by right wing nutters and conspiracy theorists.
—-“it’s you who’re wrong. I have a Ph.D. in molecular biology”——-
You have a PhD in molecular biology and you talk about a British ‘race’. Pull the other one.
Hey Stefz,
Re: “9/11…
very little would be served by Craig’s conversion
aside from ensuring Craig and his views on other important issues received even less mainstream attention…”
So you’re saying to have credibility we’ve all gotta be liars?
That’s interesting. God, maybe it’s true. The mainstream media have got folks so thoroughly screwed up that only a lie seems like the truth.
OK, keep up the 9/11 lies everybody.
To the biologically unaware Stephen Jones
Re; “You have a PhD in molecular biology and you talk about a British ‘race’. Pull the other one.”
Race: “An interbreeding group within a species.” (Websters Collegiate Dictionary).
It’s a question of gene flow.
There is not and never has been much gene flow between pyronyang and Timbuku, which means that the people of those two cities differ considerably in gene constitution and may thus be considered of different races.
However, you can draw distinctions more or less where you want, provided you define your criteria, which is what biologists do.
For example, in India, wheat used to be grown from locally saved seed. Over time, through various selective processes, each region, district or valley had its own particular strain of wheat, known as a “land race”. These land races were particularly well adapted to the local conditions.
You see the same kind of differentiation among all organisms that are widely spread. That’s why you can often tell a Scotsman in Canada, or a Ukrainian or whatever, from distinctive facial features.
Very glad to see you banning the troll at last, St. Loony offered nothing but disruption.
My guess is that the sad freak will go for disruption nonetheless, which does actually betray what the underlying motives were all along. There’s no part of, “Bugger off, you’re not welcome” that can be understood by people like that.
This excellent blog has been dragged down way too long, and decent posters felt obliged to quit because of the mindless and offensive trolling. It simply had to be stopped.
Duncan,
Sorry if I falsely smeared you as a Liberal. It’s just that you fling the “racist” epithet like a liberal.
I don’t have the energy now for further explication of the biology of human variation, or the relationship between mass immigration and the preservation of a culture and way of life. But think about this: what would Canada be like today if there had been no mass immigration? Then explain why Britain is immune from the same kind of racial and cultural transformation?
But on trade, I agree that we need tariffs and immigration controls — if that’s what you said. Then Asia and Africa can develop in their own way, and we can maintain not only our existing way of life and something like our existing standard of living but also the technical and engineering skills we need in order merely to survive in a competitive world.
“I don’t have the energy now for further explication of the biology of human variation, or the relationship between mass immigration and the preservation of a culture and way of life”
How about explaining the relationship between “the biology of human variation” and “the preservation of a culture and way of life” ?
QUOTE I have put up with this now…..
I am not prepared to put up with it…
I am also deeply sucpicious…
spend more time on this blog than me… UNQUOTE
It’s all about YOU, Craig, isn’t it?
Richard:
“How about explaining the relationship between “the biology of human variation” and “the preservation of a culture and way of life” ?”
That’s easy. Replace one lot of people with another and you replace one culture with another. That’s why I mentioned what happened in Canada. Same in Tasmania, and countless other places ethnically cleansed by both white people and brown.
Quite an impressive list of last words for a troll 🙂 Troll he was (even an archetype Troll) and banned he got. Nothing more to say actually. Just for your peace of mind: Every blog has plenty of them secretly buried in the killfile. No need to justify or think twice about it.
You just can’t argue with them. That’s what makes them Trolls. The only thing you can do is ban them and forget them. Everything else is just helping them throwing dirt on you,
“Replace one lot of people with another and you replace one culture with another”
What on _earth_ ?
Replace. Yes. If you remove one entire set of people from an area and hoick another bunch in, with no contact between them, the culture of that area will become different. Is that even worth pointing out ? What’s the relevance ?
You’re back to your zero-sum games, aren’t you. Is ethnic cleansing the only way you see different people relating to each other ?
You keep saying you have no problem with “other races”, but every time we go round this circle, you seem to keep pointing towards utter xenophobic paranoia. What about the possibility that people might come from other parts of the world and just kind of live here and be part of this culture ? You know, help to preserve it ?
Or is the absence of other races an important part of the thing, for you ?
Instead of banning people, you should be discussing the verdict of the airport plot, which I seem to remember you dismissed at the time. But I guess it doesn’t fit the narrative, does it?
Thinking of Canada, where Alfred lives, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metis_people_(Canada) looks like a fun bundle of worms.
(What’s not mentioned there is that, I think the Red River valley was where a lot of the victims of the Clearances got flung off to. McKenzie ? Can’t remember; John Prebble, somewhere. And, a generation later, rebellion against the Crown … well fancy that, who’d have thought it ?).
Sorry to appear thick, Alan Campbell, but surely this thread/post is about banning trolls, and a post about the UK airport plot might yet come about? Please remember that discussion about anything isn’t what Loony from St. Larry really about. His (or their) job was to disrupt, offend and detract. Nothing else. Unwelcome as his miserable presence was, that negative pull had become a significant part of this entire blog, surely worthy of a post (not to mention a ban).
Craig’s example of St. Loony pretending CM held positions which were not in fact taken is spot on. One could spend all day denying positions assigned to oneself. For instance – have you seen _anyone_ here make a claim about the existence of Lizzard People one way or the other apart from St. Loony himself? Yet a preponderance of threads contain scoffing references to posters here, as if such a notion held popular sway. St. Loony is a liar, a cheap propagandist, and an unsophisticated mischief-maker.
Not sure why you think banning trolls and discussing certain subjects in a reasonable fashion should be mutually exclusive.
Richard,
Try to contain the epithets and instead think clearly.
Race in Britain is a numbers game. The indigenous population is shrinking, which might be a very good thing given that Britain is a small resource-poor country.
A reduction in population would reduce the economic pressures on the population: less competition for jobs and hence better wages, less competion for housing and hence lower rents, less need for new infrastructure, hence lower taxes. In time, the population might even manage to reproduce itself without further decline.
However, if you bring in millions of people from elsewhere, people many of whom have a totally different culture from the British, then you get replacement of a declining population by a growing immigrant population and the replacement can occur remarkably quickly, although it is masked for a generation because of the lengthy post-reproductive life of the indigenous population.
I have not been to Leicester where I attended school in decades, but I understand that there the indigenous British are now the minority. It seems fairly safe to assume, therefore, that if the immigrant community of Leicester does not dominates the local culture already it nevertheless influences it substantially. And in any case, if the trend of population replacement were to continue at the pace of recent years, the indigenous British would simply disappear in Leicester and many other cities, and with them much of their culture. Black history month, I assure you, was not an item on the curriculum when I was in school.
I am afraid you have bought into the NuLabor inspired program of ethnic cleansing by psychological and political means. It gives rise to a rather more easily managed population, a population more accepting of the antidemocratic form of government now being imposed on the western nations, a population less imbued with a belief in the liberty of the individual, or perhaps without any real belief in the liberty of the individual . Does a girl subject to genital mutilation have any individual liberty? Does a girl made suicidal by the knowledge she is to be sent to Pakistan to marry a cousin she may hate have any individual liberty?
As for your ramble about the Red River and all that, I don’t get the drift.
What epithets ?
Does anyone here really believe that the 911 hijackers are still alive?
Bugger off, St. Loony – you’re not welcome. And that’s official.
Craig, he’s probably amazed that he lasted this long and has been laughing at you heartily every day. Didn’t I and others tell you all this several months ago? I’m not sure how your blog works behind the scenes, but banning his IP address is the right thing to do. Make them jump through as many hoops as possible. Yes, he/they will keep returning, but you will be irritating them whether they like to admit it or not. When you see the lengths they go to it should become obvious they are paid freaks. Who is paying them and why is the question. The answers are quite obvious. For example, Larry the Lamb is primarily here as a 9/11 truth debunker and works directly or indirectly for the CIA. You all need to wake up to the fact, if you haven’t already, that the internet is crawling with government shills. If, I hope, you can all see how controlled the mass media is, then simple logic dictates that as fragmented internet media grows the powers that be will seek to disrupt it. This is information warfare plain and simple.
Richard,
“what epithets?”
xenophobic paranoia?
Anyhow, although most blogs allow a measure of hesitation, deviation and repetition — deviation and repetition, at least, it seems to me we have digressed too far.
Obviously Craig can delete or exclude whatever and whoever he wants — provided he has the means. And clearly no one is voting to keep Larry. So that’s it for Larry, I should think.
But to make this a more interesting place, there needs to be more diversity of opinion, not less. The trouble is that anyone who expresses anything that deviates significantly from the Murray – Liberal line is liable to excoriation rather than civil engagement.
Another problem is with the software. It is a string of comments often with little coherence. Other programs allow participants to anchor comments to other comments to which they refer, thereby avoiding a muddle of different interactions in one long string of comments.
But rebuilding a web site is a pain.
Alfred, you may not have noticed but this is a thread about banning a certain Larry, not about your bizarre hobbyhorse.
If Craig wished to discuss the genetic make-up of the British, or relative immigration rates, he can open a thread on it. If he doesn’t and you still want to discuss them then open a blog of your own and those that want to talk with you will do so.
ok, I’ve read Craig’s post and skimmed the comments. Alfred bemoans the coming loss of the British race to fast-breeding immigrants.
I’d like to smile and say in America we don’t have that problem: http://dailytocque.com/images/real_america.png — but considering how nasty things are here and how our official policy seems to have turned 180 degrees away from “a decent respect for the opinion of mankind,” I guess the only thing I really have to share with you all is the pang of my loss.
Some people above, may I hug them, suggested that Larry be given the opportunity to defend himself, and then the decision be put to a vote by the community. Yo! Yo! Yo! I vote yes on that one. As an American, all this “troll” talk — of course the righteous have the right to hunt and kill them off — sounds just like US predator drone policy, and the new assassination-by-president, which I think SUCKS. I bury my head in shame. I kinda liked the part about all men being created equal, that’s the part I thought America got blessedly right, even if it took us a while to apply it, and even though it seems to have gone by pretty fast. Instead, can’t we actually TRY to come up with a fair due process, as if this blog were the world and we were all equal people in it, Larry and Craig included? Really, I think Craig was right, it’s more fun to debate someone with a different opinion than yours. And to quote somebody,
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, which is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” ~John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”
Come on, colliding with error could be fun, like a bumper car demolition derby– ? I’m sure I’m not crazy.
As to why the immigrants may be breeding faster than you, could it be true that “the more ye judge, the less ye love?”
Full circle. Love you all, thanks for letting me sit in now and then.
Stephen Jones,
Re: “Alfred, you may not have noticed but this is a thread about banning a certain Larry…”
Do you have a reading disability or what?
In the comment immediately preceding yours I stated:
“Anyhow, although most blogs allow a measure of hesitation, deviation and repetition — deviation and repetition, at least, it seems to me we have digressed too far.”
I then went on to comment on the Larry question.
Oh, and re your earlier comment, you needn’t be so informal. You can address me as Doctor.
When ‘Larry’ first appeared it was at the mention of 9/11. As I recollect, ‘angrysoba’ appeared at the same time, apparently answering the same dogwhistle.
I initially felt (and said) that they should be banned, or that you should introduce some form of moderation. However as time went on I began to feel that there was some value in allowing their postings. It was useful to see what triggered their activity – terms like ‘9/11’, ‘Israel’, ‘Gaza’ seemed to be a high priority. I wasn’t kidding when I said that we might guess the truth of some propositions from the alacrity of the denial – the Sunstein Effect.
It is also important for honest posters to the blog to develop the discipline of ignoring professional trolls, other than collecting the unwitting testimony I’ve mentioned, because ‘Larry’ will be back. He may sound oafish but his methods are carefully honed and – as I demonstrated with word counts of troll-related versus on-topic posts – quite often successful in drowning discussion with noise.
“Has someone, somewhere undertaken a PhD on trolling, its motivations, its tactics, it paymasters?”
Here’s a link to Sunstein’s paper if you haven’t already read it.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
Someone needs to do that PhD, Suhayl.
——“I then went on to comment on the Larry question.”—-
And then spent the next fifteen posts propagating your crackpot ideas.
Banning posts or posters that persistently derail threads is not censoring ideas you disagree with. If Craig decides to open a thread on Oppeheimer’s somewhat sloppy research, then I’ll be quite prepared to discuss it with you.