I had never heard of ghost banning until I was ghost banned by twitter. That of course is the idea – they censor you without realising you are censored. People no longer get notifications when I post, and the tweet only turns up in the twitter line of followers who happen to be logged in at the time my tweet goes out. Those logging in later will no longer see tweets I issued while they were away. Most of my tweets no longer show up on twitter searches, and further restrictions are applied when people retweet my tweets.
Since ghost banning, traffic to this website from twitter has fallen 90%.
As twitter do not inform you that you have been ghost banned, it is hard to know exactly what prompted it, but I believe it immediately followed this tweet.
For anyone who gets their news through the mainstream media, the spirit cooking scandal referred to performance art by Marina Abramovic, to an intimate domestic display of which Clinton campaign chairman and paid Saudi lobbyist John Podesta was invited. The performance draws upon occult references and imagery – as an “artist” her inspiration appears to be early Hammer horror films. It involves painting with blood, milk and semen, presumably from animals. To add a frisson, Ms Abramovic has claimed it is art when performed in a gallery, but real when performed in a private home.
Personally, I view it as rubbish as art, and the sort of thing idiots with too much money pay for. I think the occult references give a frisson to the idle rich, like students playing with a Ouija board. Personally I believe that kind of thing is better avoided, but each to his own. What the Podesta emails undoubtedly show is that the rich are not like us. Just as David Cameron sticking his todger in the mouth of a dead pig was an upper class bonding ritual and not actual bestiality, I don’t actually think the Podestas are Satanists. Just weird.
But what is beyond doubt is that the #spiritcooking sensation on social media had a real effect on the US election, and in an election where the margins were so very close potentially an extremely important one. Tens of millions of people saw the images on social media. It galvanised evangelical Christians to vote for Trump and, perhaps much more crucially, it contributed materially to a massive depression of the African American vote for Hillary as millions of African American Christians, disgusted by seeing apparent endorsement of Abramovic’s voodoo and satanic references by the Clinton camp, sat at home and did not turn out to vote. That 2 million black Americans who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary was not because they are racist – it was because they disliked Hillary for a number of reasons, and spirit cooking was a factor, especially as the famed Democratic machine is heavily reliant upon African American churches for the ground war. I should love to see the influence of the spirit cooking scandal measured, but given that the mainstream media who commission the polls are desperate to deny the effect of WikiLeaks on the election, they are not likely to measure it.
Instead what we have is the “post-truth” narrative. This holds that something is only true if the mainstream media says that it is. It is an easy trick to conflate a dozen ludicrous untrue stories released on social media, and then leap from there to saying everything on social media not endorsed by mainstream media is untrue. It is but a further step to argue that therefore social media must be censored. This is where we came in, with Twitter already doing this to me. Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that Facebook will take further action to prevent dissemination of “untrue” political information. Of course, they already do this, and again I am afraid to say in particular they do this to me. All my blog posts are posted to Facebook as well as twitter. Did you know when you share my post on Facebook, Facebook limits the number of your friends who can see it? In my case the limit is set to ensure that the percentage of incoming traffic to my site that comes through Facebook, is always precisely 5%. To do that, of course, they have to know precisely how much traffic is coming in to this site. Worrying, isn’t it? Before Facebook set the limitation -around the same time as twitter – the amount of incoming traffic from Facebook was around 30% of my traffic.
As with any grossly illiberal cause it is the Guardian which has led the charge for internet censorship in the UK. One hilarious recent Guardian article listed media bias towards Clinton as an example of a post-truth claim. The article did not mention the fact that senior CNN commentator Donna Brazile had been sacked by CNN after WikiLeaks revealed she had been feeding debate questions to Hillary Clinton in advance, nor Wikileaks’ numerous releases of emails detailing partisan collusion with the media to promote Hillary. It did not mention the deliberate and planned timing of primary elections and debates to disadvantage Sanders. In fact, it did nt mention any of the inconvenient facts WikiLeaks had revealed. In that, it was absolutely typical mainstream media.
Mainstream media is not post-truth. It never had any connection to the truth.
To complete the chain of dishonesty, the trope of Russian interference in the election is getting a new airing. In a painfully obvious charade, Obama is being “pushed” by his own party to reveal security service information on “Russian interference” in the US election. The focus is particularly on the allegation that the Russian state hacked the Podesta and DNC emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.
The problem is there is no such evidence. There can’t be because both the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked by Washington insiders, to my certain knowledge. I repeat that, to my certain knowledge. Hillary’s pathetic election claim that the security services had information it was the Russians, depended on a statement that the leak was “consistent with Russian methods and objectives”. Look at that statement very carefully. It says “we have no evidence whatsoever, but the President has asked us to blame the Russians”. As I say, I know it wasn’t the Russians. The only “evidence” ever shown to me by those blaming the Russians is that an alleged hacker calling himself “Guccifer” sometimes uses Cyrillic. Which may or may not be true, but as “Guccifer” was neither the source of, nor a conduit for, the leaks it is utterly irrelevant.
Fear not. The truth is out there. People are trying to make it more difficult for you to find, but they will not succeed. In my own humble case, while visits from Facebook and Twitter are radically down, overall numbers are up. The internet somehow always finds a way to work around.
Update: You couldn’t make it up!
You couldn’t make it up!
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Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!
Your must be doing something right to get the ghost banning and, yep, the internet finds its way into every nook and cranny. Keep up the good work.
One could almost launch an entire academic career on whatever happened to liberal values? The Guardian being an important example. It’s not as if it’s not important given the key role played by liberals on the great political scales of society. The lurch of the liberals towards the economic and social right of the spectrum is rather strange, given their values and principles. A lot seems to be linked to the disturbing cults of personality created around Blair and Obama, fakes who looked and sounded ‘liberal’ but were in reality deeply reactionary and conservative in the worst sense. Is it that the liberal left simply don’t accept that one can be a democratic leader and a bloody war criminal? This has to be based on ignorance of history, because it’s perfectly possible to follow a liberal domestic political agenda, yet at the same time during the imperial period follow policies that today would be characterised as genocide.
“One could almost launch an entire academic career on whatever happened to liberal values?”
True, except for the awkward fact that one could not launch an entire academic career on whatever happened to liberal values. Because you would never be hired – and you might not even be awarded a PhD to start the process.
Right again, Tom.
When I decided to write my Ph.D. dissertation about the neglected role Henry Brougham played in helping achieve the Victorian equipoise, I was only able to get it accepted by threatening to sue Columbia University for allowing Victorian historian Robert K. Webb to sink it for the role he played in resolving a plagiarism case involving a son of one of its distinguished sociologists in keeping him from leaving Morningside Heights for UCLA.
Academic standards be damned; it’s all a question of money and status.
Censorship is an awful thing, especially when done in the name of ‘freedom.’ I find liberal totalitarians frightening. It seems to be linked to unexamined thoughts about political correctness… gone wild. Control the language people are allowed to use and one controls how they think, control how they think and one stands a good chance of controlling how they act. I think this is bullshit but that appears to be the logic behind it all.
Here’s a deeply ironic quotation from nearly 70 years ago. Anyone spot the reason it’s so ironic?
“Obviously, a man’s judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted or incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning process, and make him something less than a man”.
– Arthur Hays Sulzberger, from his address to the New York State Publishers’ Association, 1948.
Could it be that this statement is coming from an owner and a manager of a famous newspaper which claims that it only prints fit news?
I remember when the NYT was going to print a letter from me about LBJ expanding the war in Vietnam after the JFK assassination, and to change its mind after it learned that I believed the Dallas plot, whoever was behind it, resulted in just this.
Thank you, Trowbridge – please accept this virtual coconut as your prize! 😎
If my memory serves me correctly my complaint to the NYT was about an article that Cy Sulzberger, a nephew of Arthur Hays Sulzberger, wrote.
I should get a whole carton of real ones.
Their so-called thought could have been taken straight from Emmanuel Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.
Spirit Cooking led to other Podesta emails that led to strong evidence of a high level pedophile ring for n Washington DC linking close associates of the Clintons. This reeks of same psychopathic predatory abuse of power similar to Jimmy Savile and various elites in the U.K. As recent police sting operations in Norway and Canada have shown, high level pedophile rings involving politicians do exist.
The code words and use of Pizza venues has caused this scandal in Washington DC to be called “pizzagate”. It must be having some impact as the censorship of this topic on Reddit, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia is unprecedented. It seems to be the spark that has lit elite panic to have laws passed to ban “fake news”.
See https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com
Warning: horrifying and sickening.
Do we stand up for child protection in the face of what appears to be institutionalised horrific sexual abuse and worse, or do we cower for fear of being censored and banned?
That link is a load of conspiratorial and delusional bollocks.
And here’s Abramavotch on the whole affair;
“I’m outraged, because this is taken completely out of my context,” Abramovic told me by phone this afternoon. She was at Sean Kelly Gallery, her rep in New York. The dinner, she explained, was a reward for donors to a Kickstarter campaign she had run. Tony Podesta has collected her work since the 1990s, and he attended, but John couldn’t make it. In fact, she has never met John Podesta.
“It was just a normal dinner,” Abramovic said, adding that about 10 people attended. “It was actually just a normal menu, which I call spirit cooking. There was no blood, no anything else. We just call things funny names, that’s all.” (The Kickstarter page advertised “traditional soups.”)
Spirit Cooking, Abramovic explained, was a performance she staged at a number of museums around the world in the ‘90s, painting graffiti with pigs’ blood. She also made a limited-edition book, which contains various recipes. That book is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among other places.
And the Satanism charge? “Anybody who wants can read my memoirs and find out that [my work] is far away from Satanism,” she said. (The book was just released this week, she noted, and it’s doing well on Amazon.) “My work is really more about spirituality and not anything else,” she continued. “I’ve been doing my work for so long, and this is a misunderstanding.” She said of the right-wing attacks, “It’s absolutely outrageous and ridiculous.”
So in the face of unprecedented censorship on the #pizzagate issue you still don’t believe that there could be some truth in all this?
Show me the bodies.
Show me the CRIME
Show me real evidence with out linking to some fruitcake site.
You can’t, because there isn’t any. Not here in podestas emails anyway.
So far I’ve seen Pizzagaters post pictures of children all around the Internet that they claim are abuse victims with no evidence other than “4chan says pizza =paedo”
It’s childish rubbish.
Written by people who have watched too many films like 7 and read too many Denis Wheatley novels
In addition to the excellent points made by Cpt. Kirk’s esteemed hairpiece above, I would also add that idiots with guns have started believing this drivel and marching into pizza restaurants fully armed. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were deliberately trying to head this off. Also, if a bunch of neck bearded x-files rejects started claiming I was a pizza themed child abuser, just for lols, I’d be doing my level best to get them to shut the fuck up as well.
This stuff really, really, doesn’t help anyone or anything. While people are concentrating their energy on the melting point of steel girders and the possible satanic messages in pizza toppings the right are stealing countries at the ballots. Large parts of the internet’s population need to quickly stop being morons.
Wolsto
That link is not the only one with the characteristics you rightly mention.
Others are the grandiosly-named “globalresearch” and the cheekily-named “voltairenet”.
Those sites you mention are an absolute paragon of truth, compared to the one and only link you posted.
If memory serves, it was called “Stopfake” a rather fitting attribute, that you possess in heaps. ?
Yes but it’s the sort of alternative news source many people want to believe. Even if it’s transparently clear that it’s utter bollocks.
http://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/
Kempe,
I’ve found the whole thing really disturbing TBH it rather reminds me of the “she is a witch” sketch in monty python and the holy grail.
It would be laughable if these people weren’t writing about violent things they’d like to do to these people based on some old crap made up after WikiLeaks
Horrified, it’s all complete rubbish, there is NOTHING in the podesta emails to imply anything to do with child abduction and/or abuse. Its absolutely childish and adolescent to suggest otherwise.
The idea that you can just decide that that these people are pedos talking in code because some bloke on 4chan says pizza is code for child rape is simply not good enough to slander these people.
I think my Nan might have been doing spirit cooking back in the days when we got a power cut every time the local brook flooded the electricity sub-station. She had this old fashioned stove that ran on methylated spirits, or paraffin, or whisky (possibly) with which she could always cook us up a nice meal.
Don’t all bid at once,
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/479231767/antique-large-brass-kerosene-burner?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_uk_en_gb_c-art_and_collectibles-other&utm_custom1=94c4c997-7bc4-44e9-9920-08291d70aec8&gclid=CNLAyKnS5NACFWi-7Qod4aoKVQ
😎 😎 😎
That was my first thougt on hearing of ‘spirit cooking’too. A picnic with food cooked on an old methylated spirit stove. Some new rijstafel or steamboat cooking craze.
Pity annaracoon has laid down her acerbic pen.
Just a little reminder that this evening’s “Question Time” (BBC1 at 10:45pm) will come from Maidenhead, Berkshire with the following panel: Health Select Committee chair Sarah Wollaston, Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon, Nigel Farage MEP, novelist Will Self and author and commentator Louise Mensch.
Sound as if it might be a lively discussion and a diverting watch.
ridiculously right wing panel. Farage yet again, the horrible Mensch who is just as right wing, and the other Tory Wollaston. Two Tories plus UKIP? The BBC are taking the piss.
I thought she had gone to America for good. Has she come back now?
Oh, I know, Habba sent her letters begging her to come back…
She still lives in the USA but the BBC will be paying for a return first class ticket, 5 star hotel and appearance fee out of your license fee for this woman who acts as a brain fart for Murdoch.
@ Mark James December 8, 2016 at 12:58
Par for the course. Which is the worst, CNN, Fox or BBC?
On the other hand, as Chaim Bermant used to say, WGAF? They are all in the gutter.
Letters are very Old Labour, Alan.
Emails !
Remember, BTW, that plasma screens are fragile and so don’t throw anything heavier than a synthetic rage…..
Nigel Farage isn’t particularly “right wing” – although that term has not had much meaning for at least 50 years. Unless you think that wanting your nation to go on existing is “right wing”. The reason why so many people like and admire Nigel is, I think, that he is normal. No weird ideas, no pretensions. He doesn’t even have the good hair, teeth, and tailoring that are usually considered de rigueur for political aspirants. Just good ideas.
Current concern is less about panel selection than about audience selection.
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2016/12/07/bbc-question-time-cosy-friends-update
Have you ever looked at the unMENSCHionable’s Murdoch funded Heat Street?
Absolute pits.
Well, Craig, Mrs Wollaston is not a right-wing Tory and Mr Will Self’s credentials as an iconoclast neeed no publicity from me. I know nothing about Mr Burgon (whether he’s a Blairite or Cor-bynite).
I would also be cautious about describing Mr Farage as ridiculously right-wing (although I do appreciate that, for you, anyone concerned about large-scale immigration must be a racist and fascist and therefore ridiculously right-wing).
Last bit not least, it would be a little difficult to divide 5 panellists equally between right and left wingers (two and a half each?).
**********************
But whatever : I just wanted to provide a public service, so to speak, by reminding readers of the details of a TV programme which will surely provide a stimulating hour wherever one stands politically.
Labour came fourth in the by-election behind the Tories the UKIP and the useless LibDem.
Labour are in a right pickle
However Will Self is extremely good value. I don’t much care for his novels, but I love his “Thought for the Day” pieces.
Dammit! Habbabkuk ‘s done my job again!
So funny because I was jeered at by him for so doing.
I don’t understand your assertion that Twitter is “ghosting” you Craig. That is how Twitter works; it’s random. If you hope for more retweets, can I suggest a little more care is taken in framing your own tweets as they are often a bit of a mess and the titles don’t give much of a clue as to what the article is actually about. I don’t mind changing them myself but I suspect most people wouldn’t bother.
This twitter search returns “No Results” for example. If anyone gets results that would be interesting to know. Do a search for twitter ghost ban for more details.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3ACraigMurrayOrg&src=typd&lang=en
Mark,
It is not that people don’t retweet. It is that when they do, it comes out to others like the example now reproduced in the update above.
And of course the person who re-tweets sees everything okay and nothing seems wrong. Followers of the re-tweeter see the original tweet but only within a certain time limit. Searches always show “This tweet is unavailable” even for followers of Craig’s account. A fresh tweet by another twitter account with the link rather than a re-tweet will show up in a search though.
And multiple other features of twitter notifications are silently disabled.
Try going to settings on your Twitter profile page, then notifications and uncheck quality filter which is set to on as a default setting.
Of course, the truth is out there, but the chances of today’s people finding it, given their wholesale ignorance and narcissism, is about absolute zero, no matter how much they twit, and how many visits there are to the various sites.
They are just cruising around to see if they are making any headway with their various delusions.
Here we have the very liberal Guardian, once again, hosting a dose of unsubstantiated paranoia about the threat that dare not be named, so dangerous is it. Whisper it to yourselves under the bedclothes… it’s the Russians again. God, they are everywhere. Whatever happened to the Guardian? It appears that they are directly targetting liberal left opinion in order to get them onside for the inevitable media censorship that’s required to protest our most cherished freedoms, like freedom of speech.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/08/hostile-states-pose-fundamental-threat-to-europe-says-mi6-chief
Further to this spirit cooking whatever that really is, the news item linked below has two photos of what appears to be a headless person on a table, said to be a woman, trussed up like a turkey and cooked. At the table appears to be two youngsters tied to their chairs. The structure of the neck looks real with a spine and windpipe, and if it’s an elaborate model what would be the point?
http://tapnewswire.com/2016/12/worlds-militaries-ally-against-the-satanic-cult/
@ Mick McNulty December 8, 2016 at 13:21
I know that the so-called ‘Elite’ get up to these abominations, and believe PizzaGate is real; but be careful, because the PTB are trying not only to close down debate on these issues, they are also putting out lots of disinfo, in order to discredit the real stuff; I have a strong feeling this site is one of the disinfo sites.
One of the principal locations for Satanic Mind Control Trauma-based ‘training’ of kids was US military bases. There was also a complex beneath Disneyland in Florida; ‘Satanism’ is an accepted ‘Religion’ on US bases and ships. Whilst there are those in militaries worldwide who are fully aware, and against the peadophilia and child torture and sacrifice, most of the top echelons are perfectly happy to let it continue.
As for the ‘White Dragon Society’, well, check it out!
Mick McNulty,
You have just put me off my large ham joint – which I boiled in water a couple of days ago (several times to reduce the salt content)
That is probably the sickest photo I have ever seen…
However, I would like to point out the following things.
1. There are some really sick people out there.
2. All images can now be easily faked – photoshop must be about 20 years old by now.
3. The Tap’s website has always been a bit dodgy (yet amazingly popular). I used to post there occasionally a few years ago – mainly to slag off some of their conspiracy theories (which so far I was concerned – defied both the laws of physics and common sense).
However I think the bloke running it (I forget his real name) is honest.
He has written a lot of his personal stuff that I believe.
He never deleted anything I wrote on his website (so far as I am aware) – yet in the vast majority of cases I was presenting a completely opposite opinion.
I don’t know about all this pedo and satanic stuff. I think most of it is bollocks. I was an altar boy – and no one had a go at me (nor anyone I knew).
Tony
I google-image-searched that picture, and it is from the horror anthology movie ‘Grindhouse’. You can see the same image at 2:20 in the following YouTube trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8AzKj5qlp0
Research is essential, people.
And just look what happened to Jill Stein’s effort to have a recount of the presidential election because it may have been highjacked, only to have a federal judge belatedly stop it all by agreeing with a state court which said she had ho legal basis for such action.
So Hillary allowed Trump to steal the election by not making any complaints about massive voter fraud.
You not even have to know the truth but also be adversely affected by it.
And when I finally learned about how the CIA/NSA hit squads were out to kill me, I still couldn’t get any lawyer or attorney association interested in prosecuting my case even though I agreed to pay the costs as they occurred. It wasn’t any ambulance chasing effort.
We are just stuck in this shit hole until we die.
‘The performance draws upon occult references and imagery – as an “artist” her inspiration appears to be early Hammer horror films. It involves painting with blood, milk and semen, presumably from animals’.
Sounds a bit like Pussy Riot and their zany antics (good when performed in Russia, but perhaps not if any closer to ourselves).
I’m tempted to remark that “those who live by the tweet die by the tweet”; so I shall. I have always been profoundly suspicious of so-called “social media”, which look an awful lot like a concerted attempt to subvert the intention of the World Wide Web and corral the escaping individual citizens into huge heavily-controlled “communities” through which they can be managed. Facebook and Twitter are convenient for those who wish to compare family snaps and gossip; I think it’s deeply unwise to rely on them for anything important. Or to entrust to them any potenbtially valuable information.
When the product is “free of charge”, you are the product.
Like it or not though they are by far the largest non-direct sources of incoming visitors for many websites.
” it contributed materially to a massive depression of the African American vote for Hillary as millions of African American Christians, disgusted by seeing apparent endorsement of Abramovic’s voodoo and satanic references by the Clinton camp, sat at home and did not turn out to vote. That 2 million black Americans who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary was not because they are racist – it was because they disliked Hillary for a number of reasons, and spirit cooking was a factor,”
If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
I don’t know about millions. But I’ve done an internet search on this bizarre and peculiar story and given the high incidence of Christian beliefs and denominations among US citizens generally and Black citizens in particular, the idea that many Black voters would turn away from Clinton over this seems not at all implausible.
I suspect that they turned away from Clinton for much more compelling reasons.
What we saw was a, long overdue, rejection of identity politics- exactly the opposite of what most pundits with their theory that Trump won because of racism are telling us. I think it was seen in the Brexit vote too: identity politics is an extravagance which poor people cannot afford when social crises approach.
As to ‘spirit cooking’ it is everything that Craig says- an entertainment for bored and not very bright dilettantes, such as the Podestas, who make a living out of pimping politicians to tyrants and manipulating journalists.
But, underneath it, there is a vital truth, so obvious that it is usually forgotten, which is that in our culture, rightly or wrongly, the most obvious forms of sexuality, which are linked to signals about reproductive fitness, are either banned or disapproved of. Which is why Princes and Presidents are fascinated by the prospects of fucking young teenage girls, and why those who pimp them have such power.
It was barely reported in the MSM. CM just can’t attribute the lack of African-American turnout for HRC to the far more credible thesis that they only voted for Obama because they are ray-cist.
When I search for ‘Craig Murray’ on Twitter, through a VPN, in a private browser window, I see both your account, Craig, and a bunch of recently quoted tweets.
So, that *suggests*, but does not prove, that you are *not* shadow banned. :/
Yes the account shows up and other people posting the link show up. It’s the search results that are filtered. Try this search for example https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=john%20husband%20craig%20muiray&src=typd
Twitter and Facebook can be convenient, but no-one using them should be under any illusion that they are primarily there to make a profit from advertising. Facebook would like you to pay them to show your content to more people. Twitter is playing with promoting tweets. These companies are not public communication utilities, though it may suit their ends if the naive consider them as such. If enough people dislike your message to actively flag your posts as spam/offensive, the path of least resistance will just be for the company to yield to this, and ban you, whatever the justice of the situation. To do anything else incurs costs for them.
You need diversity in what used to be called “push.” Make sure your RSS feed is nice to use. Comment and link elsewhere. A weekly email newsletter to a list highlighting the activity on your blog would be a good fall-back when social media seem to play crook.
Craig, thanks for the interesting article. Can you provide evidence that friends of your followers are being prevented from viewing your posts? How would Facebook know in advance how much traffic you are receiving (in order to, with hindsight, control the flow of FB referrals to your site)?
– “How would Facebook know in advance how much traffic you are receiving?”
There’s a Facebook “Follow” element on each page of this blog that retrieves content from facebook.com every time a page at craigmurray.org.uk is loaded. It’ll run Facebook’s Javascript too, unless you’ve got it blocked.
Don’t you love Trump’s tweeting, resulting in his gaining greater knowledge, like his appointing someone who doesn’t believe in climate change to head the EPA, goons in covert government to undo the nuclear accord with Iran, likely appointing David Betrayus to be Secretary of State, canceling Obamacare for more home remedies, settling scores with the Mexicans for losing that war too, etc., ad nauseam!
It’s truth on the march!
Now Trump has named Andy Puzder, a vocal critic of government involvement in labor relations, to head the Labor Department.
We are going back to the Gilded Age, but without even sensible industrialists like Andrew Carnegie.
We have forgotten everything.
Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 300 points.
Up another hundred so far today. Looks like it could be over 20,000 before the year is out.
An extremely pro-business appointment to the Environmental Protection Agency and apparently now also to the Department of Labor may be a lot of the explanation for those spectacular rises in stock prices. Trump to name Andrew Puzder, fast-food CEO and critic of major minimum-wage hike, to head Labor Department.
Some ways to maybe mitigate this outrageous Twitter ban…
Tweet the same tweet several times – like every 4 hours during a day or two especially if it’s important. I notice if you edit the blog post I get another tweet alerting me to that, so that would be one way to do it with minimal effort.
Second idea for those retweeting would be to copy the text of the tweet and type in ‘retweeted’, rather than rely on twitters retweet function. I have tried this and it seems to work – though I only have two followers!
I am online a lot and always on twitter – which I use to get news mostly. So I don’t miss the tweets as far as I can tell, but I also check the blog directly from time to time.
Take solace that you must be doing something right if they are trying to censor you.
The advice elsewhere on escaping a ghost ban is most definitely not to try tweeting the same content multiple times a day to attempt to increase circulation because that seems to extend the ghost ban.
Nobody is currently getting an alert when Craig posts a new tweet even if they have it set as far as I can see. Also people don’t get a notification even if Craig direct messages them! If there are any exceptions to this that would be interesting.
Worked fine for me. Craig Murray shows on a search and the tweet is there on the John Husband timeline. Click on it and it comes up.
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/806827639298260992
Yes if you go there directly. It is the searches returning individual tweets that are filtered
Try https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=john%20husband%20craig%20muiray&src=typd
Or this https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3ACraigMurrayOrg&src=typd&lang=en
On the first one I get the “This tweet is unavailable” message but if I click on the message it comes up so it is available.
The second gives “no result”.
That’s how ghost bans work. It would be immediately obvious if all re-tweets always said “not available”. It is the filtering of all Craig’s posts from search that is a sign of what is described elsewhere as “the highest level of ghost ban”. Together with the other subtle effects of a ghost ban the end result is that far fewer people see the tweets than normal in general. Another example – try a twitter search for Sikunder Burnes. You won’t find any of Craig’s tweets – only tweets by other people.
If Craig searches while logged into twitter he does see his own tweets in search results. If he logs out and tries the same search he can’t see them.
Try unchecking the quality filter in your notifications settings, Craig’s tweets might be filtered out because he doesn’t exactly make an effort to word them very well.
Look like MI6 Director Alex Younger is doing too much tweeting, given all his scaremongering about Russia in Syria.
Still like to know more about Younger himself, as all we know is that he was born, attended Marlborough, and attended some university.
Sounds much like former SoD Sir George Younger, the rogue who almost caused Armageddon, on Russia and the USSR.
Any relation>?
The past couple of weeks, there have been repeated calls in the mainstream media for the social media to block so-called “fake news”. I remember reading an op ed to that effect in the Washington Post. Here’s a piece in ZeroHedge about this incipient campaign: This Is the Purge We All Knew Was Coming: “Shutting Down Extremist Content”.
By the way, according to another ZeroHedge piece, the Washington Post now admits its scandalous “Russian propaganda” piece was wrong: Washington Post Appends “Russian Propaganda Fake News” Story, Admits It May Be Fake. But they’ve apparently only admitted it in an addendum to the original article on line, not in a printed article, nor even in a separate, new article on line.
The Marina Abramovic story is actually a pretty good example of how a nothing-story gets airtime when put in the hands of fucking morons.
What was widely circulated was the wikileaks email that he was invited to this dinner (weird, I agree, but so what? Utterly harmless stuff). The fucking moron troop circulated this as Podesta participating in satanic rituals, and eating blood and semen and all other kinds of stupidity.
What was barely reported was that he didn’t go. Literally in the same email dump, the Podesta brothers email the following day about him not being there. Why did that barely garner a mention (except in the mainstream sources which bothered to write about it)?
If Twitter’s answer to purveyors of this type of garbage is a ghost-ban, I’m pretty ok with that. They are a private company, under no obligation not to censor/ban, and they probably rightly see this as a branding risk if they are associated with the type of garbage information that bubbled up during this election.
Just this weekend, a weaponized fucknut went into the DC restaurant at the centre of the pizzagate nonsense. Literally a completely bogus story, wholly invented from the Podesta email leaks, but one which objectively put lives at risk when some turd took it upon himself to investigate the story. How on earth do you not expect the likes of Twitter and Facebook to start proactively dealing with these problems?
That said, I’d hope they lift the ghost ban on Craig. I would definitely not put him into the fucking moron troop that Twitter is trying to get a handle on. But it’s not that difficult to understand how he could have been caught up here.
The above is a testament as to why we need Wikileaks, and ergo Mr Assange, we need to use our voice and vote, to back those who are prepared to reveal the truth.
We must defend the 5th estate, and somehow keep the information flowing, for we cannot depend on the mainstream media to tell the truth, they haven’t for a long time.
Now with RIPA and the Snoopers Charter, clamping down and proccessing all our online activities, vital bloggers such as Craig, who provide on occasion eye-opening information, may find it more difficult to get that important data, spread far and wide.
We’re living in an age where information, is knowledge, knowledge that can be used by the voter/public, to hold people to account.
well said.
we live in very strange times.
And our masters, in trying to keep the plates spinning with their false narrative, are now having to clamp down with direct censorship.
the truth is their nemesis.
A Saudi prince has increased his holdings in Twitter, making him the company’s second largest shareholder. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who in 2011 invested $300 million in the social network, now owns 34.9 million shares of Twitter’s common stock, according to a new regulatory filing (pdf).7 Oct 2015
This Saudi prince now owns more of Twitter than Jack Dorsey … – Quartz
qz.com/519388/this-saudi-prince-now-owns-more-of-twitter-than-jack-dorsey-does/
Elsewhere the clown Johnson has embarrassed his leader just as she was closing the deal on more arms sales to the Saudis.
Boris Johnson accuses Saudi Arabia of ‘playing proxy wars’
Boris Johnson: “We need to have some way of encouraging visionary leadership in that area.”
Boris Johnson has accused Britain’s ally, Saudi Arabia, of engaging in “proxy wars” in the Middle East.
The Guardian newspaper has published footage in which the foreign secretary talks of politicians “twisting and abusing religion” for political gain.
He said Saudi Arabia and Iran were “puppeteering” because of a lack of strong leadership in the region.
PM Theresa May’s spokeswoman said his comments about “proxy wars” were not the position of the government. ‘
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38245902
Credit where it is due: much of what Johnson is reported to have said is not only true but in need of saying.
It was true, it was embarrassing to the government, and it deserves endless follow-up by journalists.
My irony about May closing an arms deal was lost!
Thank you Sharp Ears, for that rundown on the clown prince of Westminster Boris Johnson, maybe he feels he’s not up to the job, again.
Meanwhile his boss May didn’t disappoint, as she addressed the (GCC) the Gulf Cooperation Council, in Bahrain.
May never once mentioned human rights or womens rights, whilst speaking to Middle East leaders, including the kings of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the leaders of Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.
May praised those nations, for bold and fundamental lasting change, and focused economic opportunities.
She added that Iran was a threat to the region, but she neglected to add that, Saudi indiscriminate bombing of Yemen had led to widespread starvation, in a country that imports the majority of it food supplies.
May finished with, as Britain leaves the European Union, so we intend to leap forward and be more committed to Gulf investment.
Johnson is really slipping now – he has committed the ultimate, unforgivable political sin.
He told the truth.
He told a half-truth.
He pointed up the local actors (some of them) in the region who between them are supporting or attacking isis, but he failed to mention those larger actors outside the region who are really pulling the strings.
I’d say that Johnson’s position is quite sensible from a British govt point of view, a US govt pov and a French govt pov.
That’s why they’re all adopting it.
They’re distancing themselves.
He is a fast learner of the Trump school – just call it out what the heck especially when the PM was on her Gulf tour. Interesting that media story did not break then but politely waited.
Sharp Ears, thanks for posting this.
– “Boris Johnson has accused Britain’s ally, Saudi Arabia, of engaging in “proxy wars” in the Middle East. The Guardian newspaper has published footage in which the foreign secretary talks of politicians “twisting and abusing religion” for political gain”
Very true. +1 each to the Guardian and Boris Johnson for this – which, of course, does not absolve either from wrongs elsewhere.
– “PM Theresa May’s spokeswoman said his comments about “proxy wars” were not the position of the government”
Ha! She would say that, wouldn’t she? “Ooh, no, they’re not our proxies”.
Ghost Banning is a tool used against spammers. Of course if the post-truth generation want to believe what their favourite alternative news sources tell them then it’s the work of the lizards.
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/blocked-from-twitter-search/
Possibly you’ve been over active in promoting the book but have you e-mailed anybody about it yet?
Personally I wouldn’t touch Facebook with a ten foot pole.
Snopes has it that John Podesta didn’t actually attend the ‘spirit cooking’ (his brother did), and that it was basically a normal meal: http://www.snopes.com/john-podesta-spirit-cooking/
The snopes article doesn’t actually describe what happens at the meal. People wouldn’t be paying big money to Abramovich if there wasn’t some kind of performance.
For some people fake supernatural events will be offensive in the same way that going to Hooters would be offensive to some people.
The Pizzagate stuff is crazy nonsense of course.
I think we may now have the trigger required to convert Habba from pillar of the Establishment into fulminating libertarian –
http://nhub.news/2016/12/house-of-commons-passes-digital-economy-bill/
You didn’t see that in the MSM, did you? Unless Private Eye is MSM, that is.
A list of the perversions now deemed taboo in the UK, and to watch which it will be necessary to register with the authorities, is supplied by an Australian er, outlet –
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/britain-proposes-sexscene-bans-compulsory-age-verification-for-porn-websites/news-story/716ece8f4e63fe1e5c6d39dd8d1d51c5
Third reading unopposed (because no-one could be arsed to turn up) despite correct and severe misgivings about its application.
And : The Digital Economy Bill proposes a fine of up to £250,000 (AU$450,000) or five per cent of turnover, whichever is higher, for commercial pornographic websites which fail to implement an age verification process.
Critics warn that this process, which could include a requirement to enter credit card details, risks restricting adults’ access to legal content — and could open a door to fraudsters.
Culture minister Hancock last week said the legislation would “protect the freedom of adults to watch pornography online but provide adequate protections for children with the same sort of safeguards online as they have offline”.
He admitted the measures outlined in the Digital Economy Bill would not cover social media sites such as Twitter,…
Well, fancy that.
“Culture minister Hancock last week said the legislation would “protect the freedom of adults to watch pornography online”
That’s curious.
Some of those activities which are detailed in your ozzie piece are already banned, if retained in images or video, in the UK.
I think there’s quite a good argument for banning all these porn sites, and indeed porn more generally.
Didn’t always feel this way. Thought it was freedom and so on.
I think it can be very damaging to real human relationships.
And god only knows what effect it has on young people going through those difficult, but foundational, teenage years.
All is available, at the click of a mouse.
Weren’t like that when I were a leery lad.
We had to work hard for even crumbs of affection.
The usual guff from (SIS) that a imminent terrorist threat is upon the UK, jeez, talk about the ploy of Strategy of Tension.
Younger who took over from Sawers, (who saw a terrorist around every corner), has said that SIS has thwarted 12 terrorist plots since 2012. I guess we’ll have to take his word for it, or will we?
Younger, whose codename is “C” is already pushing the same old codswallop, it’s all Russia and Assad’s fault.
Look out for a dubious event on these shores in the near future, that will be traced back to the Assad regime, or Iran.
Do you ever read other people’s posts?
Here you go Trowbridge, you wanted to know more about “C”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Younger
Sorry RoS. I had finished mine when the phone rang. Afterwards I sent it without looking back.
No need for apologies, all information is welcome. ?
Thanks.
Certainly sounds like a close relative of George Younger, like his son, given all the special treatment Alex received when George was Secretry of State for Scotland, and SoD.
Would certainly explain why he is so concerned about keeping secret who he is, especially his SIS service in Vienna in 1995.
That was when Jorg Haider was getting back on the political map, and Josef Fritzl aka “Mad Austrian”, who had been set up on February 28, 1986 unsuccessfully as Olof Palme’s assassin, was going off the rails with that love nest he had with his daughter in the basement.
Have to look more into how the lid is being kept on all this, and more.
Alex obviously has skeletons in his closet, and MI6 is exploiting it wildly.
Alex Younger MI6 is not related to Sir George Younger according to this. Younger’s son is now in the Lords as Lord Younger of Prestwick.
http://www.thepeerage.com/p19201.htm#c192008.1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Younger MI6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscount_Younger_of_Leckie Sir George Younger
Too many Youngers?
Especially since you have made up one. George Younger’s son in the Lords is James Younger, 5th Viscount of Leckie.
I haven’t made anything up. Give over.
I said ‘Younger’s son is now in the Lords as Lord Younger of Prestwick.
http://www.thepeerage.com/p19201.htm#c192008.1 ‘
‘As of 2016 the baronetcy and viscountcy are held by his son, the fifth Viscount, who succeeded in 2003, and who joined the House of Lords as an elected hereditary peer in 2010.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscount_Younger_of_Leckie
The end. As far as I am concerned. TTFN
Apparently James and Alex Younger are brothers, and neither are NHS seniors.
Sharp Ears
“Too many Youngers?”
_______________________
I believe the problems of OUR NHS are to a large extent due to too many seniors.
Too much unnecessary debt, fake internal markets and poor management.
Are key.
All the elements necessary for collapse and “saving” by the private sector.
I was unable to leave this as a reply to the relevant posting below, forgive me for that. However, for the record, Lord Younger of Prestwick, was the title of the life peerage awarded to George Kenneth Hotson Younger, 4th Viscount Younger of Leckie who served as as Secretary of State for Scotland and Secretary of State for Defence in the 1980s. His son is now the 5th Viscount Younger of Leckie but does not hold the title of Lord Younger of Preswick as that title, being a life peerage, became extinct on his father’s death in 2003.
The 5th Viscount Younger of Leckie joined the House of Lords by means of a by-election held amongst the Hereditary Peers.
Meanwhile the Libdems have been find £20,000 pounds and reported to the police.
“The Liberal Democrats have been fined £20,000 and reported to police after they failed to properly declare 307 payments worth £186,676 during last year’s General Election.
So staggering were the “systematic failures” of the party’s campaigns officer, Tim Gordon, that the election watchdogs believe he may have knowingly made a “false declaration” and Scotland Yard have been called in to investigate.”
http://www.thenational.scot/news/14952583.Liberal_Democrats_fined___20_000_and_reported_to_police_for_failing_to_declare_election_cash/
I doubt the media will report this story with gusto, like they do when the SNP are in the spotlight.
No doubt Farron’s minion in Scotland Rennie, will hope it all blows over sooner than later.
But nothing about the Tory overspending!
Brexiteers will love this but assume you mean this: https://news.channel4.com/livepages/2016/election-expenses/