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– “…and why I no longer contribute.”
apart from leaping in periodically to point out who the bad people are.
“It was powerful enough to get Trump elected”
Getting back on topic, I think that’s the point. It affects how people are voting and ultimately who governs. It’s not just a small few people on forums, it is part of the political landscape.
For what it’s worth, and this is simply my personal opinion, I can’t know who is who on forums, or who might be connected to whom, because I don’t have the necessary information (and I don’t want it either). That is as it should be, let the site admins/Mods deal with anything that needs dealing with, they have the information needed.
ET, it also undermines rationalism generally and public understanding of science in particular. The attitude is that we’re “just bullies enforcing their belief system over everyone else’s”, obscuring that true scepticism’s nature is organised disbelief, re-framing scepticism as “opposition to the official narrative”.
Ironically, the attitudes from which this develops are promoted by the corporate media, AKA the “MSM” home of the “official narrative”, each time it presents “science” as incomprehensible, weird and repeatedly reversing, and “scientists” as authority figures in white coats surrounded by incomprehensible equipment. The corporate media’s attitude fundamentally alienates and confuses the general public about science.
Please could someone explain the blog rules to me regarding Covid issues (preferably a mod)e.g. The Virus, the illness, the treatments, lockdowns, masks, statistics and vaccines etc
Is scepticism of the official government line / advice not allowed? If a contributor is allowed to voice dissent with reasoned argument and evidence is it ok for others on the blog to insult and abuse if they happen to disagree with the views put forward?
I was shocked when I saw that a Scottish doctor (Malcolm Kendrick) was branded as a crank by one of the mods here when someone quoted his work / opinion. I looked up Dr Kendrick’s blog and read his last comment on Covid (end of December) and could find nothing cranky about it, what it did was set out the many of the difficulties that the public and experts have in interpreting the data and the inherent weakness in some of the data.
It is perfectly reasonable given the lack of certainty that both experts and lay people form opposing opinions. That does not mean one side are deniers, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, liars etc and the other side are 100% correct. The anti-Semite one really did puzzle me as to how someone who uses the term “they” can be suspected of referring to a particular religious group / state or person associated with it.
If no questioning and debate regarding opposing opinion to the government’s line is allowed here then for goodness sake please state so. The same goes for the high level of ad hominem abuse that appears in the blog, if allowed and stated as such (I understand it is contrary to the main blog rules) then people will know and be able to choose if they want to be a part of that type of discussion group. But if no opposing views are allowed it is not really a Discussion Group is it?
Oh dear, yet another conspiracy theorist.
Platty, would you please start by acknowledging the difference between the scientific consensus and the government line? Because they are not the same thing, and frequently are at odds.
– “The anti-Semite one really did puzzle me as to how someone who uses the term “they” can be suspected of referring to a particular religious group / state or person associated with it.”
Perfectly simple; it is what I have personally experienced on a number of occasions, even to the point, after years and years, of being asked “are you Jewish?”.
So I took a look at Malcolm Kendrick’s 30th December 2020 post, and got past the irrelevant waffle about Dante’s Inferno, and then got as far as this:
– “I have stripped away at the accuracy of PCR COVID19 testing. I found myself left with nothing I could make any sense of. I hacked down to establish the way that COVID19 deaths are recorded. All I found were assumptions and difficulties.
– Did someone die with COVID19, of COVID19 – or did it have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with COVID19? Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I wrote some of the death certificates myself.”
Yep, he’s just feeding the conspiracy theory. I’ll post evidence later, but I’ve posted it many times before.
Platty, can I assume that Malcolm Kendrick argues against social restrictions?
Platty, perhaps I should have written, more charitably, “Oh dear, yet another one taken in by the conspiracy theory”. Now; that evidence.
There can’t be much wrong with PCR tests, and “of or with covid-19” must be a spurious non-issue, or the measured infection rate could not predict the recorded death rate. But it does; the death rate rises and falls following the measured infection rate, lagging by about two weeks.
Here is an archived snapshot of the covid figures for the UK:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210125175326/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Under the second graph down, “Daily New Cases in the United Kingdom”, tick the box for “7 day moving average”, which smooths out the effect of weekends upon collection of statistics. Do likewise for the fifth graph down, “Daily New Deaths in the United Kingdom”.
Look at the shapes of the smoothed curves from September 2020 to January 24th 2021. Note how the peaks in infection precede the peaks in deaths by about two weeks. Note that they rise, fall and rise again, but the pattern of infections predicting deaths remains consistent. Note that the same applies for the shapes of the spring 2020 peaks, even though the size of the infection peak is smaller – but then we know that there was a major shortage of test kits back in spring.
If you or Malcolm Kendrick can tell me how this pattern could occur unless test results and recorded causes of death are substantially accurate, do tell.
Clark, it might be a little rash to assume that ‘Platty’ is a new participant in this debate. ‘Platty’ posted via a Tor exit node – which happens to have an IP used earlier in this discussion.
People who are banned often resort to VPNs in an attempt to evade moderation. Habbabkuk used the technique obsessively every day for months, with virtually no success. We may need to restrict the ability to post via anonymous VPNs at certain times.
Platty: “Is scepticism of the official government line / advice not allowed?”
Indeed it is most definitely allowed! For instance, telling people they shouldn’t wear masks early on in the pandemic, with the Welsh government positively opposed to masks, was a terrible idea. In the case of the UK government, they _lied_ to us to prevent the unwashed masses hoovering up PPE supplies. The Welsh government was just stupid, insisting that the Welsh behave entirely differently to everyone else in the world, and wearing a mask would make everyone feel immune from the virus, and so take greater risks.
The UK government welcomed tens of thousands of people through UK airports from Covid-19 hotspots early on in the infection, and has only just decided that maybe people coming from heavily infected areas might need to be quarantined, and not just have self isolation imposed on an advisory and self monitored basis.
The “track and trace” system was – and is – totally inadequate, not fit for purpose. The UK government seems to be more concerned with handing fat contracts to their mates than tackling the virus.
The “eat out to help out” scheme was a fantastic success – for the virus. It helped out the virus to an enormous degree, while taking money from the taxpayer to do so. Takeaway? Nah. That’s no good at all. You have to “help out” the virus by staying inside a restaurant while you eat.
What about cajoling people to return to their offices, post-haste? You might be first in line for firing if you don’t, government ministers warned.
And so on. There is a great deal to criticise the government about. Pretending that criticising the useless, slow, half-measured and self-defeating policies of this government is “not allowed” is – frankly – silly.
mods-cm-org, no, they have to hide their IP address or Bill Gates might have them killed to stop them revealing The Shocking Truth!
Well that was an interesting welcome to the blog.
(I attempted to submit this response earlier but after the 12th Captcha puzzle I gave up.)
Straight in Clark accuses me of being a conspiracy theorist as a response to my request of clarification of Discussion Forum rules. Clark then goes on to explain the mechanism which enabled him to be able to identify anti-Semites. He then demanded answers from me on various Covid topics and gives me a lecture on PCR results vs Daily Deaths ending with a challenge to me and/or Dr Kendrick to refute his claims. No clarification of blog rules given though.
Then a mod wades in and suggests that I might be a former banned commenter because I used TOR, It is not at all remarkable that the Tor node that I entered the discussion on had been used previously in the discussion, that I would be passed through the same node in the same discussion is remarkable though because of how I use Tor, I alternate country entry points. No rules clarification given.
Glen did attempt a clarification that voicing scepticism is definitely allowed giving the government’s past and present positions on masks as an example; scepticism of the government’s past position is allowed but presumably not the current advice. He then gave some other examples where his opinions on other aspects of government policy are entirely suitable as topics for scepticism, so if I agree with Glen my scepticism is allowed if I don’t it’s not.
Well my initial request for clarification of rules has not been very successful however my concerns have been answered leaving me in no doubt.
Re the Mod’s concern re VPN and TOR, people use them because there is a very real and genuine demand from people who wish to retain privacy online, if the blog removes that option that is entirely down to the blog but please explain the reasons. I am entirely capable of spoofing an ip address if I want to but I think that is deceitful.
I commented via TOR because my usual browser does not work with reCAPCHA
PS Clark’s pathetic last offensive comment prompted me to search “Craig Murray” AND “Clark” AND “TOR” which returned some extremely interesting results including confirmation that he is well acquainted with the use of TOR.
PPS life is too short to waste time and spar with bigots on the CM Discussion Forum and satisfying the captcha system.
To clarify, posting via the TOR network on the discussion forum will now be limited, as the anonymity it confers is being abused to evade moderation. Forum topics or replies posted via TOR or other anonymous VPNs or proxies are now eligible for deletion by moderators without further explanation.
All contributors (not otherwise banned) of course have the option of posting without using TOR.
Platty: “scepticism of the government’s past position is allowed but presumably not the current advice”
Why on earth would criticism of current advice/position “presumably” not be allowed?
P: “[…] so if I agree with Glen my scepticism is allowed if I don’t it’s not.”
Why the heck do you get this idea from? Did _anything_ in my reply to you indicate this?
‘Strewth… you were wondering if criticism of the government is allowed, I said of course it is and provided some examples. I did not say this was an exhaustive list, and only historical in nature, you presumed that for some strange reason.
If you’re going to presume all sorts of silly restrictions, it’s not much of a surprise you feel you have a problem with these forums.
If you have a disagreement, please argue it! But saying “I read it on Facebook”, or some crank on a youtube video said so, or just repeated assertion of a point while never addressing efforts made by others to bring sense to that point, is probably less than welcome.
Platty, yes, you seem to me like a conspiracy theorist. Here are some phrases of yours upon which my opinion is based:
– “Is scepticism of the official government line / advice not allowed?”
– “If no questioning and debate regarding opposing opinion to the government’s line is allowed here then for goodness sake please state so.”
and this is how conspiracy theorists always see things; a clear-cut two sided conflict between what they call “the official narrative (in the MSM)” and themselves. But I immediately offered you an alternative:
– “Platty, would you please start by acknowledging the difference between the scientific consensus and the government line? Because they are not the same thing, and frequently are at odds.”
which you ignored. Instead, you resorted to whining about bias, ticking another conspiracy theorist box. I regard this as drivel; it has nothing to do with a discussion of covid measures based upon evidence and reason, it’s just insinuation of a Grand Conspiracy to suppress “The Truth” by means of persecution.
If you want to act like a conspiracy theorist, that’s your own choice, but it means that you’ll have nothing interesting to say about the pandemic or how we can protect ourselves from it, and indeed from your replies it seems that you haven’t.
