UPDATE It is astonishing how many people are incapable of comprehending the following phrase from the article below:
The account still exists and is visible online
Yes, I know the account is still there. The problem is I am locked out from my account and bizarrely, when I try to recover it the process ends with an automated meassage saying there is no such account.
An extraordinary number of people in comments on Facebook, Twitter and below the line here are triumphantly posting that they can still find the account, with the implication I am not blocked. I know it is still there. I said that. I have been locked out of it.
END OF UPDATE
I appear to have been banned from Twitter. For over a week I have not been able to log in to my account.
When I enter the password it takes me automatically to the Help Centre, where an automated message tells me the account @craigmurrayorg does not exist. When I enter my email address and phone number it tells me it has no record of them.
All this on a 15 year old blue tick account with 110,000 followers.
The account still exists and is visible online, though very difficult to find because of extreme shadowbanning.
Although my account has been heavily shadowbanned for years, until now this has never shown up in the shadowban test sites.
The reason for this is that my account has been previously limited by twitter not showing my tweets to my followers, which the shadowban test sites cannot test for. It has not previously been shadowbanned from searches, which they can test for.
The additional shadowbanning on the account has come into place at approximately the same time Twitter locked me out, which seems to rule out the removal of my account access being a technical glitch.
The wordpress to twitter function has also been blocked, by which posts on this blog were tweeted out on my twitter account. That is an entirely different mechanism to the normal login, so again this is not a technical password glitch.
This was my last tweet before I was banned. With no other information from Twitter, I can only presume this tweet prompted the ban.
Every attempt to use the appeal mechanisms that exist when a twitter account is suspended or banned, are closed off by a message that the account does not exist and they have no record of my contact details, which is absolutely not true.
Over half the traffic to this website comes via twitter. On this website I express in mild and sometimes intellectual terms my dissent from the neoliberal world view.
In the past two years this has caused me to be jailed, to be interviewed about leaks on another matter by the Police, to be thrown out of the National Union of Journalists, to have two laptops stolen, to have my facebook account hacked and my twitter account blocked.
The warning bells for the freedoms of speech and dissent we took for granted in western society could not be ringing louder nor more clearly.
I cannot of course take to twitter to tell people I have been blocked by twitter. I should be most grateful if those of you with twitter accounts could tweet about this and link to this post. Please do the same on any other social media which you use.
May I ask if you have thought about subscribing to support this blog and my work, that you do so now? The efforts to cut off my social media reach and traffic to this site are also of course a threat to the income which supports me.
But the site will as always remain free and open, and the content is free to republish and repost elsewhere, including in translation.
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They have consciously and deliberately banned and blocked you.
it is the politics of it all where you are concerned.
Persona non grata.
I hear that, following the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, who has always been not a liberal but an anarcho-capitalist, in thrall to the claptrap spouted by Ayn Rand or some such trash, people are flocking to a service called Mastodon. Although I have no idea what this service is perhaps you should consider getting your account over to it
Posted a link on Twitter, not sure if it will have any effect though.
In his’Anatomy of Fascism” Robert O Paxton writes of fascism:
It embraces a utopian vision of moral renewal and vengeance to coalesce around an anointed political savior. It is militaristic, anti-intellectual and contemptuous of democracy, especially when the established ruling class mouths the language of liberal democracy but does nothing to defend it. It replaces culture with nationalist and patriotic kitsch. It sees those outside the closed circle of the nation-state or the ethnic or religious group as contaminants who must be physically purged, usually with violence, to restore the health of the nation.
This is happening in terms of Britnat fascism (brach office of the US Mothership) before our very eyes. This is what your isolation and exclusion is about
Paxton continues:
“Fascism does not rest explicitly upon an elaborated philosophical system, but rather upon popular feelings about master races, their unjust lot, and their rightful predominance over inferior peoples:.
Think British Empire, Brexit, Little England, racism and the increasing narcissism of the Brit government – not to mention Nato’s proxy war on Russia.
We are living in dangerous times!
I’m not familiar with managing a Twitter account. But would you also see what you are seeing if someone had discovered your password, got into the account and changed your password, email address and phone number?
At first sight that seems to fit the symptoms better than a ban.
No, there is a route and form to fill if you suspect you have been hacked. I have of course also tried this. That route will recognise and respond to your historic email address and phone number. That claims to have no record of them, not just that they are not the current ones.
Some ideas off the top of my head:
– The account problem may well not be related to the extended shadow banning. My experience as a software developer is that bugs often happen to be discovered at the same time, and then are hard to analyse because you keep thinking they are related when they are not. This might be a similar case, and the account problem might even have an innocent explanation.
– Twitter’s account recovery process might generally not be working any more, or vital data might have been lost, due to the actions of the sacking artist who now owns Twitter.
– Hackers who really know what they are doing may be able to prevent the original owner from getting his account back by changing the email address several times in a row until all legitimate old email addresses are forgotten.
– Do you have more than one email address? E.g. one that you normally use and an old one (or two) that still redirects to it? Better try them all with the Twitter account recovery, even if you think you remember which one you used with Twitter. Also, check that they are still redirecting as they should. Maybe an old email address was hijacked.
“That route will recognise and respond to your historic email address and phone number. That claims to have no record of them, not just that they are not the current ones.”
What happens if you try to open a new account using the email address and phone number which Twitter claims to have no record of?
Also, when I search for
Craig Murray
in the Twitter search box (without being logged in) your account comes up top of the list of 61 people called Craig Murray.
Interesting because I tried exactly the same thing half an hour ago and it did not come up at all. As the shadowbanning check site also found. That aspect may have been relaxed since I posted this.
It is plain that the account has been stopped in a way designed to give deniability it has been blocked. I have not received notification of suspension or deletion.
The twitter account has run for well over a decade. I have serious social media experts working on this blog. However much you may wish, for some reason of your own, to try to cast doubt this is happening, it is happening. We have spent a week trying every possible way to get the account back. The normal avenues are all specifically blocked off.
If somoene else had hacked the account, twitter’s response to help enquiries would not be that the account does not exist, particularly as I said and you have found, it is still visible.
I accessed your account right now, here’s the link, last post 6th of Jan about the Guardian, obviously you can’t access it to update posts, Phil Cross must have a big smile on his coupon right now.
https://twitter.com/craigmurrayorg
“Philip Cross” is now permanently blocked from Wikipedia, having suddenly run into an administrator with some integrity.
He is compensating by editing Wikiquotes: for example, by finding the nastiest possible things to post about George Galloway, and indeed Craig Murray (for example, David Aaronovitch’s valuable opinion). Not that it matters. No-one could care less about Wikiquotes.
The Wikipedia editor “NomdeA”, who appears to have virtually identical concerns to “Philip Cross”, has edited the same deeply obscure Wikipedia pages (such as “Casanova ’73”), and who I strongly suspect to be either a sock puppet or a meat puppet of “Cross” (more will follow on my research into this account), remains active.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Philip_Cross
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/NomdeA
https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Craig_Murray&diff=next&oldid=3219438
I know you apparently have a lot of ‘followers’ but really don’t you think that it’s healthier to not swim in the cess pool at all than to implicitly support it ?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-ministry-of-truth-the-global-strategy-of-information-control-part-2/
Drop Twitter, restart with Mastodon, Telegram or whatever seems appropriate, even if it is extremely frustrating. World War III has begun and the world needs your voice.
Unfortunately for all of us I think you’re right.
I don’t know Mastodon but try Telegram.
The world certainly needs Craig’s voice.
Oddly, searching for @CraigMurrayorg brings back … https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayorg ???
As the article clearly states the account is still there. But I can’t access it to post anything and twitter respond by claiming the account does not exist.
Perhaps a malicious administrator has deleted some of your account details. Your account is still there but your username and email address have been altered or deleted.
Aw man, that’s the pits. Yours is one of the few accounts on that site where you can guarantee every tweet will be worth reading. Always an informed heterodox view, usually infused with fun and mischief. I wonder whether your removal is the work of your near enemies – the weasels of Anglo/Scottish centrism – or at the direct behest of the fat controller himself, the MIC oligarch Musk.
When I went into twitter on a browser just now, and searched for “craigmurrayorg”, one of the two items that showed up was “go to @craigmurrayorg”, and when I select that I can see your entire timeline. When I search for Craig Murray, and hit return, your account is listed under People at the top.
As the article clearly states the account still exists. The problem is I cannot access it to post anything and when we try to rectify this twitter claim the account does not exist.
I see bots have showed up in the comments here trying to gaslight you. Shows they were primed waiting for you to protest your removal.
Even if you manage to regain you twitter account access wouldn’t it be prudent to also have a presence on other platforms such as Telegram and/or Mastodon as others have suggested? Wouldn’t it also be prudent to set up an alternative to pay pal?
It’s probably irritating to have people like me suggest this but others have been able to do so. Consortium News, Scott Ritter etc.
Since I started to use telegram to follow certain people who had been banned from Twitter, such as Scott Ritter, I see more and more of my ordinary contacts, friends, family members have also joinerd telegram.
I found you just now without difficulty. I assume the blocking is as you say because of the last Ukraine tweet. George Galloway still comes up dubbed ‘Russia state-affiliated media’ and I think he’s going to law about it. I suppose there are political sensitivities that could threaten $44billions’-worth of investment.
He’s not blocked man, his account has been made inaccessible
They fear what you have to say, they fear the truth getting out there.
Open a GETTR account like the Rev Stu had to do for a while, and tell people in here that you’ve done it and provide a link, it will at least let you back into the fold.
Time to move onto Mastodon
I’d say it wasn’t Twitter that banned you but that it was UK intelligence services that have messed up your account. Many people who had been banned have had their accounts restored recently.
the guardian is indeed the primary propaganda arm of British military intelligence. DeclassifiedUK documented in 2019 how it has been controlled by the MoD for the past decade. could be the spooks didn’t appreciate you pointing out the absurdity of much of their war propaganda. that would suggest they fear popular support is fragile for this latest NATO adventure.
To judge by the discussion between Gonzalo Lira and George Galloway I heard on Galloway’s show a couple of hours ago, Ukraine is close to total defeat. Some people may be in a panic.
Why can’t you use the Craig Murray Justice Campaign Twitter account?
https://nitter.net/cmurrayjustice
Only two tweets were posted last year so I’m sure the owner of the account would be happy to pass on to you their log-iin credentials.
Sooner or later we’ll meet at mastodon.social anyway. So use the occasion to switch while anyone else does before Twitter goes offline.
Found you, no problem but no tweets since Jan 6.
Exposing The Guardian, or as I like to call it Der Sturmer, for its nefarious activities…that’ll do it in our Nazi sympathetic new order. Jawohl, mein herr.
Wait until we can no longer find this site except on TOR. I used to read the RT site in re the Ukraine War to see what RT was actually telling their own people (as opposed to what our press were telling us that RT was telling their people) Obviously there were clear differences between the two. First they openly banned the TV channel and then, suddenly some time later, RT just didn’t exist online. Of course it still did but our government is preventing us from looking at it. This is the exact thing that we express anger over other governments doing (and rightly so) I can’t any longer call this country a free and fair democracy. There is only limited freedom of the press and anyone who goes too far is jailed, discredited etc. As Assange was able to prove – our every word online is watched and noted by NSA for the benefit of our government in a reciprocal arrangement to skirt the law. But we don’t live in China where they do this kind of thing illegally – no, we live in the UK where they find a legal loophole.
I can still get RT online. I think it depends on your ISP.
I used to watch and enjoy RT on TV.
Now I watch online via a secure VPN.
McAfees anti virus provide VPN access, but I am sure there are others who do provide VPN software.
I suggest unpin the tweet thread dated 12 May 2022 re Israel killing journalist Shireen Abu Aklen.
With the advent of the new extremist Israeli government there seems a coordinated anti Iran campaign world wide. With the IDF employing a significant pool (over 1000) reporting and manipulating social media If you put up a pinned tweet criticising Iran’s protest response you will probably have no problems.
I can’t access the account to unpin anything.
Wait…so Elon Musk didn’t make Twitter a free speech zone and save it from leftist censors as he and his army of sycophants and hangers-on had been promising? ? Well I am shocked, I say, well and truly shocked.
The third-party app I’d been using to access Twitter in order to bypass the intrusive ads and ‘recommends’ has also stopped functioning as of 13 January (as have all third-party Twitter applications). No warning was given and there is no word on if this is going to be permanent. I know, too, of several left-leaning accounts that approvingly retweeted Musk’s saving freeze peach propaganda only to find themselves shadow banned and effectively vanished from Twitter…the same fate suffered by accounts that vociferously criticized Musk.
Let this be a lesson to all those credulous fools, and there are many, who immediately throw their support behind any ‘populist’ charlatan who takes an ‘anti-establishment’ stance and promises to restore free speech, democracy or whatever.
Words and lofty promises mean absolutely nothing until they are backed up by concrete actions. The proof is in the pudding, as they used to say.
I think that’s “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. Your version sounds like there was a mix up between the printer’s and the baker’s.
I think Musk et al were very naive to think they could establish a genuine free speech zone without the interested parties who have worked so hard to control speech getting in there to muck things up.
It’s more likely that it’s Musk et al that are doing the banning/shadow banning. It’s touching that despite Musk having bought Twitter and owning it there are still those who think his hands are clean.
Well, if you use a service that is free and run by a massive corporation, you are the goods to be bought and sold at the whims of its owners. You are there to make money for them. This is also just as true for Instagram and Facebook.
Your only choice now is where to go start on the Fediverse – what instance of Mastodon would you like to join?
You are being targeted for exposing the truth and for supporting others who have exposed the truth. All the more disgusting when we see a nest of unscrupulous liars being celebrated as “newspaper of the year”. (Yes, the one that headlined Russia is targeting churches and that Julian Assange was visited by Paul Manafort!) Please God you get your account back because dissenting truthtellers are desperately needed in these times when there is no political or media opposition to NHS privatisation, endless austerity and war.
“All the more disgusting when we see a nest of unscrupulous liars being celebrated as “newspaper of the year””
The purpose of a newspaper is either to make money for its proprietors, like any other business, or to disseminate a narrative that its proprietors wish to be disseminated. The Graun apparently no longer does the former, so presumably its purpose is to do the latter, which it appears to do very well.
That is fascism alright. Todays umptieth amendment going through the Goebbels Today programme trying to justify their ignorant ecocidal repression of non violent direct action is taking the biscuit. will they stop old ladies demonstrating about 40% price rises of staple goods next?
Soon there will be so many civil servants, teachers, RMT workers, nurses and ambulance drivers striking that one could peg the term General strike to this action.
But we will not hear this term, nor will we hear about the red Tories getting financial contributions from Rachmanian US Health companies, that flooding in Gloustershire and Hertfordshire are not 1 in a 100 year events, but an annual reoccuring nightmare, that Rishi and Nicola did not really get on due to her ludicrous attempt to make self id a national issue, or of the precarious situation in Ukraine on the brink.
They are controlling the narrative, but not our monds and eyes or our actions. Their ignorance and sordid entitlement if power marks fascism in the western hemisphere, and all these recidivists who bang on about battles past and present whilst duly quoting ww2 do not realise it.
FASCISM HAS WON.
we are fed Royal trivia from the past, some which was known here in Norfolk for a long time, and endless propaganda pretending that smudgy red is really blue and yellow.
Ffs we are flying a non Nato countries flag on City Hall in Norwich, their own flag packed away in some drawer.
It appears that somebody can post to your Twitter account, unless you are starting to put obscenities in your posts. The latest post (re Palestine) ends with the sentence F*** Off.
That’s not the latest post, it’s a pinned tweet.
My mistake. Strange, I had never expected you to swear unnecessarily.
Console yourself with the knowledge that you have now transitioned from being merely “The Legendary Craig Murray” to become “The Mythical Craig Murray”
It worked OK for King Arthur and Robin Hood, and let’s face it, unlike William Wallace, those two appear to have avoided being hung drawn & quartered, so what’s not to like?
N.B. I concede that none of the above were ever on Twitter, but I have Gandalf’s fax number if that helps
(if you can’t strive to see the funny – indeed, slightly absurd – side to someone in Twitter taking upon themselves the righteous duty of banning you, then surely they have won. You are a bigger man. As indeed was Hagred, though he is now of course sadly no longer with us)
Don’t worry Andrew, I do see the ludicrous side. It is very flattering that an old bloke in Edinburgh with a laptop is such a threat to the state they have to keep stealing the laptop or blocking its product!
Bingo
That’s because your new laptop changes colour; they fear its mojo.