This is essentially a free speech forum. I enjoy much of the banter which goes on between commenters, particularly the dedicated band of people who post on a daily basis. There is an important distinction between my writing, and the comments section. The proportion of readers who leave comments is well under 1%. I cannot know what percentage of the readers read comments, but I suspect it is not terribly high.
In social media I find establishment hacks – particularly journalists and Labour Party functionaries – dismiss my thoughts by referring to the comments section. “Craig Murray – have you seen the tinfoil hats comments on his blog!” being a genuine and very typical example. Well, if people wish to damn me by association with the views of other people, that is sadly an example of the low intellectual standards of the British nomenklatura of our time. The only views on here which are mine are those which I write.
I cherish the diversity of the comment threads and am fond of our little community, most of whom I have never met. I do not value people by the standard of how close their views are to my own. I am sometimes saddened by the personal animosities which arise between people.
We state some rules from time to time. This is the current set, which I just made up:
No racism. Any comment which is racist will simple be deleted immediately. The biggest problem we face is anti-Jewish comment, which I will not tolerate. We are not in the business of stigmatising anti-Zionism as anti-Jewish, but there are quite frequently distinctly anti-Jewish comments. I deleted one just an hour ago.
Similarly, no holocaust denial. I do not believe it should be illegal (I am against thought crime) but I do not wish to have it on my blog as those associated with it often have very unpleasant sympathies. That is not to say the subject of the holocaust can never be mentioned – it will never be possible to ascertain the precise number who were killed, and it is important we remember not only the Jews but the Poles, gypsies, gays, freemasons and numerous others who suffered. But the basic facts are not in doubt. It is surprising how often people attempt to insinuate holocaust denial.
Sockpuppetry. It is in practice impossible to outlaw sockpuppetry without a formal registration system, which I do not want. But the adoption of multiple identities within the same thread is not to be allowed, nor the creation of identities of which the purpose is to ridicule, attack or insult another contributor.
Fair Play. Play the ball, not the man. Address arguments, not people. Do not impugn the motives of others, including me. No taunting.
Relevance
Attempts to keep people on topic are hopeless, but do try.
9/11
We don’t discuss 9/11. There are plenty of places on the web where you can do that. It tends to take over threads.
Contribute
Contributions which are primarily just a link to somewhere else will be deleted. You can post links, but give us the benefit of your thoughts upon them.
No explanation.
Enforcing these rules is necessarily arbitrary and needs judgement calls. Moderators are precluded from explaining decisions online. If you want to complain use the contact button.
Moderators
We have, and have had, excellent moderators over many years. But almost all have found it not only time consuming but also surprisingly emotionally draining. If you are interested in volunteering and are willing for me to know both your real and online identity, please get in tough using the contact button.
Macky: “The root of all your problems to be honest.”
Another attempt at pseudo-psychological bullying.
Macky, what do you want the moderators’ identities for?
Ishmael; “Dunno, maybe I am”
No comment !
Glenn_uk; “I’m bearing up pretty well, all the same!”
Self-diagnosis with your affiction is meaningless.
Over & out !
Macky, 12:56 am:
‘Let’s try it again to see if it was really a “moderation interface mistake”‘ etc…
Ah, so it was merely personal abuse that was deleted, not any sort of rational argument.
Come on Macky, why do yo want the mods’ names? What do you intend to do when you get them?
Macky, 1:29 am
Pseudo-psychological abuse. Again.
Ishmael, beware.
Macky dispenses medical advice without a licence. Bit naughty that!
Just thinking, This where we where meant to come and show our true evil vindictive etc …at our ‘trouble-making’ worst. Init?
I’m so board. …
Quite funny though. .
“No comment !” …Nice, little shy maybe? I’m quite shy.
“Come on Macky, why do yo want the mods’ names? What do you intend to do when you get them?”
Stand up, everyone!
I am Spartacus !
I mean…
“Je suis Le Mod!”
“Nous sont Le Mod!”
“Tout le monde est Le Mod!”
🙂
Ok, I ‘demand’ (contribute) not only reversal of ‘new’ practice but compensatory amendments in the other direction.
Until then to anyone who ‘matters’ …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZ99otxjug
ps, and yes Macky, he could just change is to “No Rules For Comment Moderation”.
But O hang on….*sigh* it’s all gone pear shaped. I need therapy…
Time to empty the cup again.
Ishmael- what do you mean mate, you think that should be a sub-section of this blog, “No rules for comment moderation”?
Hmm, interesting. What about getting sub-threads up there, to stop it being an entire mess – ask the mods, whenever one needs creating?
No, you might be onto something there.
Damn, “Mad” Macky has cut & run, just when it was starting to get enjoyable. Never mind! Tomorrow’s another day 🙂
Btw, “Mad” Macky – you are a gutless coward. You skipped every direct point I made to you all evening, and instead fastened on just an inconsequential part _every_ time, going for a feeble counter instead.
You also did you usual trick of playing shrink, hinting gleefully as if you had actually discovered a mental defect in your correspondent, and were – with a shocking lack of ethics, if one believed for a second your implied abilities as a shrink – crowing about it.
You claim some sort of violation, an intrusion has been perpetrated on you, but dance away the moment any scrutiny of this momentous, horrible crime gets an airing.
Let’s face it, “Mad” Macky – you’re an obsessive, manipulative, pointless joke – which everyone gets except you.
Glenn_uk; “Let’s face it, “Mad” Macky – you’re an obsessive, manipulative, pointless joke – which everyone gets except you.”
LOL ! You were still up at 3.18 am, and I’m the “obsessive” one ! 😀
Glenn, I was actually trying to be polite when I pointed out your appalling lack of even a modicum of common perceptive ability, because another way of saying it, is that you are extremely dense.
I lost the desire to take you seriously when you stated that Clark had “inadvertently” revealed a personal detail about me, compounded when you then naively asked what difference does it make anyway if people know that I’m female; you obviously haven’t got two brain cells to put together to realise that people treat you very differently if they know you are a woman, and it gives chauvinists another stick to beat you with, and you have to consider the amount of, often quite very vile, sexist abuse Mary has received here to know that.
I only really stuck on this thread last night to exchange banter with Ishmael, not to trade insults with you sad wackos, but if you persist you will receive a few more home truths that you will not like.
Yea, she loves me..
Get over it Glenn, watch that anger man.
So what do you think Macky, Mary the ‘acceptable’ female in the Group, not too much trouble?
Ishmael; “Mary the ‘acceptable’ female in the Group, not too much trouble?”
Yes, the other known females seem to be members of the Axis-of-the-Dim, so by definition are already acceptable.
As to Mary, not so “acceptable”; when she’s not being attacked by the troll pack, it’s the Axis-of-the-Dim gatekeepers, and often by both groups; Not that she ever used the term herself, but just like “Ziofuckwits” got expunged from this Blog, there seems to be a move to similarly expunged the right to call somebody a “troll”, and of course to point out the possibility that somebody in position of power or influence just might be open to be pro the Jewish State of Israel if they are Jewish themselves; under Craig’s direction the moderation is making sure that everybody is “acceptable” in this respect ! 😀
Macky, if you really wanted which sex you are concealed, you should have either (1) said so in your e-mail, or (2) omitted the “friendly name” from your e-mail address. Of these options, only option (2) would have been ethical.
Both option (1) above, and what you actually did, would have placed me in a position of having to deceive on your behalf. Both inevitably create a conflict of interest – should I deceive on Macky’s behalf, or should I be honest towards the majority? Obviously, you believe that I should deceive the majority. So you apparently regard my interests and everyone else’s as inferior to your own. Given your many abusive comments I find this unsurprising.
NB: I reiterate that I do not know which sex Macky is; all I have is a “friendly name” from an e-mail address, which could well be fake. Of the several people that I’ve discussed this with only one has found it likely that Macky’s comments are actually written by a woman.
Macky, it is also interesting to see you “playing the sexism card” when you spent so much effort berating Suhayl Saadi for allegedly “playing the racism card”, though I expect you have some long-winded incomprehensible excuse as to why this is not hypocritical on your part – you always have in the past.
Macky, I doubt you’re aware as to how aggressive, belligerent and, well, macho many of your comments come across as. I think your comments seemed like those of a white supremacist to Suhayl, who has suffered abuse from such types on multiple occasions. So, far from being “sly” (as you asserted), he just came out and asked you directly, much as I did regarding your apparently blinkered support of Putin’s government – I never did get a straight answer from you regarding that, nor anything else that I can recall.
Apart from your apparent aggression, the other impression you give is a strong sense of superiority and entitlement.
Macky, it is sad that we cannot be amicable towards each other. From many of the links in the comments you post, our ethical positions and much of our political opinions are remarkably similar. But my impression is that beneath your socialist mask you are highly competitive, and that you visit this site mainly for a fight; this seeming consistent with your opposition to moderation unless it acts as a decisive weapon in your favour.
Did you not want Habbabkuk banned?
‘Opposition is true Friendship’
‘The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction’
‘If others had not been foolish, we should be so’.
-William Blake.
And some are incredibly foolish, but bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him…
“Macky, it is sad that we cannot be amicable towards each other.”
Seriously? You want a “friend” like that?
I feel my problem is I have developed to strongly oppose Craig’s ideas of late. I don’t believe in his politics, etc.
Yet though he doesn’t openly oppose me, I feel i’m more of a friend/supporter than him to me.
And I imagine those who I feel do not know freedom should not be convinced by me. How can you be free unless you have faith in good human nature, and if you don’t and think it all needs control? Give up now, we don’t want saving from that perception thanks.
I know what path i’m on, laws, nation states, ect may have some ‘legitimacy’ like crutches are for recovering…But I believe ‘my’ end point vision very alternative. I’ll always be off topic, not relevant, unproductive, Personal, Not personal enough.
And often Contradictory.
Glenn, I’d like everyone to get along. I seriously believe that everyone has a good contribution to make, if only a basis for cooperation could be found.
For instance, the clash between John Goss and Resident Dissident reveals absolutely nothing of value, but I see unrealised potential in their relationship. They both wish to cut through propaganda, albeit propaganda from opposing sides. If they could develop respect for each other as people above and beyond the ideologies they each support, they could develop an amicable but adversarial interaction, each presenting elements from their side’s propaganda for the other to test. By an iterative process of elimination and acceptance, together they could build much clearer and more accurate descriptions of the true situations in Ukraine and Russia, and of Kremlin, NATO and Neocon policy.
Two heads really are better than one, and above beyond that, the synthesis of two people’s thinking processes can be far better than the simple sum of their individual outputs – and that really is the basis of most of human progress.
we don’t want saving with* that perception thanks.
Ishmael, 2:01 pm:
Ishmael, this is the nature of blogs; one host, many commenters, even more readers. Asymmetry is inevitable.
Through an interaction between Craig’s circumstances and Craig’s ethics, chance made Craig someone unusual – an insider turned dissident who retains many of his insider contacts – and thus unusually valuable. It’s not that Craig is better in some moral sense than the run of humanity. It’s that the interaction of chance with Craig’s personal necessities placed him in a very unusual position. It had to happen to someone, and it happened to be Craig.
The trouble is that structure will develop unbidden, unguided. It is inevitable that humanity will end up having to cope with the behaviours of structures; languages will evolve, states will develop, armies will be raised. Therefore we do well to learn how the development of structures can be influenced such as to be most beneficial.
You’ll be all right. Try getting into conversations on older threads – there’s always a lot of scrambling after Craig’s limelight on the front thread, which is one of the reasons that moderation is required, to try to preserve the topic under discussion until, hopefully, some progress is made.
Ishmael, I don’t understand your 2:02 comment. I don’t know who or which point it is in reply to. Actually, I fail to understand quite a lot of your commenting, which is why I often don’t reply to it.
“one host”
One law for the lion and ox is oppression…
“You’ll be all right. Try getting into conversations on older threads” Eh? lol, No I won’t…
“there’s always a lot of scrambling after Craig’s limelight on the front thread” Indeed.
“hopefully, some progress is made.”….
I am nobody.
“William Blake”:- What is your name?
“Nobody”:- My name is Nobody.
“William Blake”:- Excuse me?
“Nobody”:- My name is Exaybachay. He Who Talks Loud, Saying Nothing.
“William Blake”:- He who talks… I thought you said your name was Nobody.
“Nobody”:- I preferred to be called Nobody.
“William Blake”:- Nobody?Um, shouldn’t you be with your own tribe or somethin’?
“Nobody”:- My blood is mixed
My mother was ungumpai picani, my father was habsoluca
This mixture was not respected; as a small boy I was often left to myself
So I spent many months stalking the Elk people, to prove i would soon become a good hunter
One day finally, my Elk relatives took pity on me, and a young Elk gave his life to me
With only my knife, I took his life
As I was preparing to cut the meat white men came upon me, they were English soldiers
I cut one with my knife but they hit me on the head, with a rifle
All went black; my spirit seemed to leave me
I was then taken east, in a cage
I was taken to Toronto, then Philadelphia, and then to New York; and each time I arrived in another city, somehow the white man had moved all thier people there ahead of me
Each new city contained the same white people as the last, and I could not understand how a whole city of people could be moved so quickly
Eventually, I was taken on a ship across the great sea, over to England, and I was paraded before them like a captured animal, an exhibit
So I mimicked them, imitating their ways, hoping they might lose interest in this young savage, but their interest only grew
I was copying them so they placed me into the white mans school
It was there that I discovered, in a book, the words that William Blake had written
They were powerful words and they spoke to me
So I made careful plans and eventually I escaped
Once again I crossed the great ocean
I saw many sad things as I made my way back to the lands of my people
Once they realized who I was, the stories of my adventures angered them
They called me a liar
Xebachae-he who talks loud saying nothing
Ridiculed by my own people, and I was left to wander the earth alone
I am Nobody.
https://youtu.be/kTJs10SdiMk
Ishmael: We saw a pretty good exhibition of Blake’s work at the Tate a few months back. They always have a few items of his work, but this was quite an impression collection. I didn’t realise how detailed and intricate his work was before seeing it up close.
Blake clearly struggled with the monotheistic creation myth. If only he could have read Darwin.
Ishmael, have you read Moby Dick?
Glenn- Did you?…I’v been meaning to see them as I hear it’s something. Most of my life has been fine art/ painting so i’m familiar with his work. But print’s etc..
“If only he could have read Darwin”.
If only Darwin could have read a lot of things. Like quantum physics. Who knows.
O dear what can the ‘matter’ be, my heads stuck in the lavatory.
@Clark, to be “amicable towards each other” requires honesty, so by starting your post with a three paragraph self-excusing dissembling attempt, for what we both know was a deliberate act of spite, is a non-starter right there.
I am not “playing the sexism card” as you continue to dissemble, but instead am objecting to your unforgiveable betrayal of trust, as I can never ever trust you again; period.
Suhayl Saddi has an undeniable habit of insinuating racism when criticized; period.
That you still want me to put my hand over my heart and solemnly swear that I’m not an agent working for Putin, is just more testament to your thin grip on reality.
That you really think that my comments over the years here, have ever suggested anything but contempt for all supremist racism, and that you actually think I could possibly be involved in something like “Israeli dancing” given my views about Israel, only again confirms your delusional mindset.
I certainly do not crave any notion of entitlement, and would be opposed to it on principle, and do not consider myself superior, but I do have a very low threshold for fools & charlatans, and prefer to speak plainly to such people, just to make sure they don’t misunderstand.
Don’t further delude yourself by thinking we are anything like ethically comparable. Suhayl has only now when pressed expressed his pov on Russia & the Ukraine, despite all those long months of raging debates, simply because he didn’t want to upset his friend Craig, which is bad enough, but your position of reflex loyal blind support for Craig is even worse, as that sort of fanaticism can ultimately leads to all sorts of horrors, of which your disgraceful conduct during your attacks on Craig’s critics, offers a telling & frightening glimpse.
No, I don’t frequent this blog looking for a fight, but am the sort to both speak my mind, and expect to be freely allowed to speak my mind, both on povs that I don’t agree with, or behavior that I object to; I see very little point in filling threads with comments merely expresses agreements to povs that we, as readers on a Human Rights activist blog, all mostly naturally agree on.
There’s was a time that I did want Habbabkuk banned, that was when his trolling was completely out of control, making any meaningful discourse here very difficult, if not impossible, and was also at the same time viciously targeting Mary. Now I just wish that this moronic mocking menace was not so protected as he is, as given a level playing field this poisonous buffoon would have been sent packing a very long time ago.