Harry's Place

Funny you should mention Facebook. It allows serious, credible threats of murder which courts find not merely actionable but deserving imprisonment to stand:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/technology/facebook/6067897/Teenager-is-first-to-be-jailed-for-Facebook-bullying.html

Twenty five years to the month after I just posted to Usenet I find I like the Internet less and less. There’s a coarseness to debate which reveals a lot of people involved to be either johnny-nomates, already ready to explode, or rather sad losers who can swear and shout from behind a keyboard but whose daily life is one of inadequacy. Too many people are unable to form an argument of more than a paragraph without either abusing their interlocutors or descending into crude shouting, and there’s some sort of Godwin’s law at work which says that any discussion will inevitably degenerate into accusations of bad faith directed at everyone who doesn’t agree.

So on the 20th anniversary of my first posting I gave up on Usenet, and (with one small exception) I’ve not been back. I’m currently at a peak of blog and forum activity, but I’ve decided to register for an OU degree to fill the time and mental effort and disengage from online discussion entirely.

I think that it has proved a honeypit for the left, where an echo-chamber of blog stories reporting on other blog stories has replaced any sort of public activity or engagement, and nonentities who are big noises in the left blogosphere are utterly unknown and utterly uninfluential outside that context.

It seems that any sense of political engagement which might lead to action is now a bunch of blokes (and it is always blokes) who start a blog in the hope that after a spat with another blog they might get a gig as a regular paid columnist on CiF. And that’s it. While the BNP organise and the Tories move inexorably towards office, the British left is reduced to a twisty maze of blogs, all alike. Even the SWP have no existence outside being mocked online and then responding online; outside the few thousand people (if that) who regularly read political blogs, politics out of the mainstream has ceased to exist.

Blogging isn’t the political discourse of our days, the new Hyde Park. It’s a few blokes who vent their amorphous anger at the world online. It is the right’s dream come true: all that energy, directed at the keyboards of computers the country over. It’s often remarked that the left blog more than the right: yes, and that’s why the right are succeeding.

Hmmm, his first comment in that CiF thread has been moderated out! ;)

Blogging is my way of LIFE !!

In its dying days, the British Left casts about in desperation for scapegoats.

HP does a fantastic job and its to its credit that naked and vile abuse doesn’t get posted all that often. Its also to its credit that antisemites and Israel fact falsifiers also get to post here. Its great to pull them apart.

My only objection is that of the three times I’ve been moderated and had to change my details over the last year were for disagreeing with Obama-Shmaltz. That seems to be the worst crime you can commit at HP. To my credit (I hope) I backed-off and didn’t use new identities to continue the argument. I got slapped and I saw sense. Thanks surrogate parent Gene.

Also, I enjoyed that I could use some pretty strong swear words and after I got it out of my system I realised how juvenile it became and I think I notice it has nearly stopped with many posters.

My observation is that HP has changed in 18 months like some live organism that evolves a personality of its own.

I find it interesting that Edmund Standing felt he couldn’t make free expression of issues which seemed to revolve around Islamist extremism. I think that might still be an issue that floats HP close to criticism. But that’s just to stifle legitimate debate.

Love You, All!

(and waiting for Gene to post latest Obamacare support polling figures. Oops!)

Maven,

(On holidsy, somewhere in Norfolk, on my Asus Eee PC via my mobile phone connected to the Internet. Ain’t technology wonderful?)

“One of my most nauseating blogging experiences was reading a thread at CT where some of the regular commenters expressed their support for the murder of Iraqi interpreters.”

I see this post by Brownie derives from a comment in an earlier thread where he writes “many of the regular commenters”.

I suppose one should grateful for the correction from “many” to “some” but I think the true figure is “one”, a person who has subsequently been banned from CT on a permanent basis.

Nor would the reader of Brownie’s post get an accurate picture of what the original CT posts were about from what he says here. In fact, D2 was writing in support of Dan Hardie’s campaign on behalf of the Iraqi interpreters and didn’t merely take commenters to task, but pursued an aggressive policy of deletion.

All of this would have been obvious if Brownie had used the search function at CT to check the original.

CT has a comments policy (advertised on our front page) and, subject to the usual limitations of time and attention, we try to enforce it, as Brownie himself knows.

From my own perspective, many comments on threads are from the right or further right political compass, though few from outright B.N.P. fellow travellers. The times I have been away to read comments on other sites was to realise that overall the commenters at Harry’s Place are moderate by the standards the internet. Ones from juveniles or adults who have juvenile tendencies stand out but are not the norm. Some threads attract ‘anti-Zionist’ posts which stand. Given the moderators have other jobs, I can recall only a handful consisting of not much more than expletives which got through. I have read no outright threats. I have read moderators comments warning posters about racist language.

I suspect the issue here is that Harry’s Place offers a meeting point and out let for opinions emanating from a left poitical stance which does not toe the current ‘party line’ on Islam and internationalism. Hard luck.

I don’t like brussel sprouts

A much maligned vegetable, the truth is, mostly they’re overcooked, possibly Connor’s problem too.

“I suspect the issue here is that Harry’s Place offers a meeting point and out let for opinions emanating from a left poitical stance which does not toe the current ‘party line’ on Islam and internationalism. ”

Nail on Head.

That is what the likes of Foley (who frankly Ive never heard of) and Bertram (who i have heard of because he is always here when Israel is discussed) find so frightening.

Meanwhile the Independent and The Guardian are gradually going down the toilet and increasing numbers of people who matter (Tim Marshall and several others I could mention) come here.

There are some issues/threads on HP that worry me – e.g. the blood libel in Sweden.

A bloke called Conor who 99.9% of the population havent heard of but spends all his time on CiF calling for HP to be banned……..that just makes me giggle.

And Im a pretty miserable sod usually.

MattG

I’ve been reading HP for over 4 years now, and I very rarely comment. I have seen an improvement in the standard of discussion in the comments, especially with the reduction in lonely nutters like sonic flooding the site with their inane drivel.

It seems that, for whatever reason, people are attacking HP but this time have decided to attack the comments under the posts. This allows them to neatly dodge what the bloggers here are saying (things which they clearly disagree with) yet allows them to criticise HP. This is a weak and pathetic tactic, one that HP should ignore from now on.

Keep up the good work.

From one of Conor Foley´s comments on the CiF thread:
” the dichtomy of the above and below the line views on Harry’s Place is striking. A couple of recent pieces have made what I onsidered to be reasonable points criticising the Israeli Settlers and calling for talks with Hamas. The below the line comments were about 80% in opposition to both viewpoints – and extremely virulent: For example:

‘The error of Cast Iron was that it stopped way too short. The Israelis should have rooted out Hamas and executed its members´ ”

The “virulent” comment states,that Israel must fight Hamas to the bitter end rather than engage in “talks”.
It seems as if C.F. wants this viewpoint to be banned from public
debate.
If he gets his way,- what next?

“he is always here when Israel is discussed”

Love the innuendo there …

Apart from a very short comment on the school vouchers thread the other day, I haven’t commented here for a long time. Since Israel is a frequent topic of conversation here at HP, your “always” comment can’t possibly be correct.

I think the problem for Conor is that a liberal-left blog expresses cogent opinions, above and below the line, running counter to what he believes should be the liberal-left position. Were he to look at comments on some mainstream outlets such as the Telegraph, Daily Mail etc, he would find that Harry’s Place deserves its liberal-left designation, but oddly this is apparently of little concern to him.

Hi Chris

No innuendo whatsoever. If you dispute the fact that your forays here almost always involved Israel that is your right.

Im happy to correct the ‘always’. Regularly will do fine.

I agree that less so of late. But then i recall that sharper minds here usually had you scurrying away with your tail (and anti-zionist cliches) buried firmly between your legs.

That is, of course another thing that troubles the likes of ‘Conor’.

Anti Israel tropes that work so well on CiF are usually shot down in flames by less sympathetic (and frankly more intelligent) souls here.

MattG

“Conor returns to this same point over and over; that it’s an obligation to moderate and if you don’t/can’t you should close down or be shut down. This is, whether he intends it to be or not, a call for all blogs to become professional.”

Stick to your point, HP editors.

A man whose atavistic instinct is to ban and repress doesn’t sound like the sort of man with whom I’d be glad to “have a drink”, with respect, Brownie. But all to their own.

“it would be easy to cite such threads at CiF”

Indeed

http://www.zionismontheweb.org/CommentIsFree_ParliamentASCttee_July08.pdf

Hmm, I’m reminded why I don’t bother any more ….

Commenter Matt:”he is always here when Israel is discussed”

Me: “er, no …”

Commenter Matt: “If you dispute the fact that your forays here almost always involved Israel …”

I think I would dispute that too, but it is a quite different proposition as of the “frankly more intellingent” souls ought to be able to see.

As for “anti-zionist cliches”, I’m sure you (a) both have some specific examples in mind and (b) are able to attribute them to me. Or maybe not.

As people have already said, enemies of HP are always hyper-partisan left wingers who have nothing but vitriol for anyone who disagrees with their enlightened and superior stance.

They barely tolerate dissenters of their own political identities, be they Lib Dem, Labour, Green, SWP….But to have or commenters or even bloggers who may vote Tory or even UKIP is beyond the pale. That’s the crux.

The fact is Harry’s Place is centre-left, and damn close to the centre. Harrys Place bloggers see merit in arguments based upon the argument itself and not upon their political tribesmanship. Other sites I could mention viciously attack people who they see as outside their political tribe.

People who attack HP, often have vile, racist, comments on their blogging circle; but it’s nearly always cloaked in progressive language about ‘anti-zionism’.

Conor’s latest on Cif :

“2. Have you ever studied the laws relating to free speech and libel?

Seriously, if you ask David T he might lend you a book on the subject which I wrote while he was my intern at Liberty 15 years ago. Or you can order it here:”

Blimey.

I suppose one should grateful for the correction from “many” to “some” but I think the true figure is “one”, a person who has subsequently been banned from CT on a permanent basis.

I’ve just done a search and unless I’m doing something silly, it appears comments are not archived (my search retrieves the post only). Nevertheless, I’m happy to be corrected that the number of CT commenters actively calling for the murder of Iraqi interpreters was one, however, that’s far from the end of the story. At the very least, there was some equivocation from other commenters and there ensued an earnest debate about the extent to which interpreters could be regarded as legitimate targets. It certainly wasn’t a case of one rogue commenter saying something disgusting and the rest of the CT commentariat excoriating him for it. My nausea wasn’t contrived.

Nor would the reader of Brownie’s post get an accurate picture of what the original CT posts were about from what he says here. In fact, D2 was writing in support of Dan Hardie’s campaign on behalf of the Iraqi interpreters and didn’t merely take commenters to task, but pursued an aggressive policy of deletion.

Goodness me. It seems I can’t do right for doing wrong. I wasn’t attempting to provide chapter and verse on the context and I didn’t encouraged readers to believe I had. I was, however, keen not to give the impression that the repulsive comments were endorsed by the CT authors. I think I achieved that.

Isn’t the point of all this that what I remember most about that discussion is the comments yet, unlike Conor, I don’t extrapolate from there to pour ill-deserved scorn on the blog itself?

CT has a comments policy (advertised on our front page) and, subject to the usual limitations of time and attention, we try to enforce it, as Brownie himself knows.

I happily accept that CT is more vigilant and ‘hands on’ as regards its moderation policy. My personal view is that there is a tendency blame dissenters when things start to get out of hand/stray off-topic even when the instigators are the regular members of CT choir. But hell, it’s your blog. I also accept that we sometimes miss comments that do deserve deletion, much more so than you guys do. But I return to my point about the amateur nature of blogging. I mean, most of you guys are working in academia, but do you think it’s fair to demand the same standards are applicable when the blog owners have real jobs?

do you think it’s fair to demand the same standards are applicable when the blog owners have real jobs?

Oh puhleease!

Oh come on, that was funny.

HP occasionally produces some decent articles; it also produces a fair amount of shite, and many of the posters are total arse-holes. (There’s one particular sphincter who manages to bring the McCann’s into everything, for instance.)

However, Foley’s call for censorship is far more offensive and exposes the authoritarian streak that runs through a sizable chunk of the left.

It is your right to express your views, however idiotic or obssessive they are.

I think that CiF feels under threat. I must say that Foley’s stupidities don’t seem to fit with “Comment is Free’s” alleged (not actual) ethos (I have given up on the bit that says “facts are sacred” – most of their writers wouldn’t know a fact if it bit them on the bum and care even less about writing them).

I have a very strong feeling that he’s been put up to this, but by who and for what purpose?

And Brownie, I agree with Belm. I like to share a pint with people I have something in common with. It sounds like Foley has gone out on a limb and has sawn off the branch behind him.

Shatterface, I agree with you about right to express opinions. Why should CiF be allowed freedom to insult, not allow people who are insulted the right to reply and yet the likes of Foley get to lecture anyone else and try to stop them from speaking out?

And many blogs publish “shite” as well as good articles. Again why pick on Harry’s?

By the way David T’s “update” states

“This statement had upset his wife, who was reduced to tears.”

Well David T knows that Conor has lost friends to terrorist attacks, including in Iraq. People I’ve known who have had partners or family members working in war zones as journalists or aid workers have found the worry that they may be killed extraordinarily stressful, to the point where some couples have broken up.

David T, sensitive as ever writes

“It is not nice to find that people are saying horrid things about you on the internet. God knows, I don’t enjoy it.”

Well, David, your not enjoying it isn’t even close to being comparable, is it?

Well David T knows that Conor has lost friends to terrorist attacks, including in Iraq.

Cue my caveat that I have no mean respect for Foley… I know the above, Chris, because he never fails to waste an opportunity to tell us. Furthermore, I know of one sometime commentator on HP, more commonly found on CiF, whose elderly mother has received unsolicited calls suggesting violence against her child.

Did that happen here?

I have had someone, on CiF, who knew where I lived and lived just a few dozen miles away threaten to “stick someone nasty in my face”.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, get over yourself, you berk.

Given that you’re the King of Philosophia, what are your thoughts on Brownie’s outlining the fundamental difference between professional and amateur blogs?

Is Abb1 still on CT?

I guess Conor was never subject to any of Will Rubbish’s unpleasant outbursts cos if he was he would certainly have had it shut down by now…. Oh wait…. Am I on to something here ?

I propose sin-bins for commenters who cross the line.

For example, “Morgoth, you are sinbinned for five days. You will not be able to post in that time. If you apologize then you may have a day cut from your sentence.” etc…

Any incitement to assault should be a red line. Moderators have warned me before to cool it.

The point being of course being threatened with violence by the likes of Will Rubbish is something not to be taken seriously, rather like the rantings of Morgoth.

Conor is being absurdly OTT in this which is a pity because he is actually usually a good chap to debate with.

How long have you been sin-binned for, Benji… no… Mullah?

How long have you been sin-binned for, Benji… no… Mullah?

I’ve never been sinbinned Alan.

and the commenter who expressed these views should be ashamed of himself.

Certaintly NOT.

When Foley stops shilling for the enemies of the enlightenment, then I’ll stop (sarcastically) suggesting that he be Fisked-in-a-Pashtun style.

Foley is typical of certain people on the left. Not only does he believe his arguments are intellectually correct but he also suffers from the hubris of being utterly convinced his point of view is morally right. He cannot countenance people who disagree with him other than by resorting to claims that they are racist/Islamophobic etc etc

Well David T knows that Conor has lost friends to terrorist attacks, including in Iraq. People I’ve known who have had partners or family members working in war zones as journalists or aid workers have found the worry that they may be killed extraordinarily stressful, to the point where some couples have broken up.

You know, I’ve lost close relatives to terrorists. I’ve carried more coffins in funerals for friends murdered by terrorists than anyone should ever have to carry in any one lifetime.

What I DON’T do is get all fucking precious about it and constantly try to assert my moral one-upmanship by going on and on about it.

And that is the worse thing about Foley, his constant refrain of “I’m right because I’ve lost friends to terrorists!”

‘People I’ve known who have had partners or family members working in war zones as journalists or aid workers have found the worry that they may be killed extraordinarily stressful, to the point where some couples have broken up.’

Indeed, such feelings of one’s life being under threat are extrordinarily stressful, as any Israeli will tell you, the difference of course being that Israelis do not get any discounts on CiF (or HP) because of that.
Nor should we, in my opinion, but neither should anyone else, particularly when their reason for being in dangerous parts of the world for short periods of time is through personal choice – not because they really live there.

I was about to ask that if we found two people who’d lost friends/relatives to terrorist attacks, could we tell Foley and Philopher King to button it. I was thinking of Palestinian terrorism, but Irish does just as well.

Okay, this thread is about Foley, so it’s reasonable to mention him. How did the CiF thread become about it? He mentioned it, didn’t he?

Note, I made the above comment before Nursey came along. I got my wish!

I’ve got a lot of admiration for Conor Foley’s work and I do think some of the stick he gets here is out of order

True, Morgoth does rather make a stalkers beeline for him whenever he comments here and I have quite often asked the overwrought Goth to cool it. But speaking as someone who “gets stick” from the DST’s, crooked timber contributors using false names, the crazier end of the zionist spectrum (and the crazier end of the anti-zionist spectrum) as well as every downwardly mobile ex-grammar school boy who’s very existence seems threatened by any reference to a working-class upbringing all I can say is tough shit.

Marvin is so right. Lazy corrupt politicians, especially of the “Left” pull out the old cliches about Honest Hardworking Families, while ensuring that the dole queues lengthen & a client underclass fails to vote.

Left/Right tribal loyalties are anachronistic today. Derek Hatton, Galloway,Benn, the blasted Kinnocks – just what do these tribunes of the people know of everyday life, including middle class life ?

As someone who was tribally Labour & from a socialist background, I view most left wingers with contempt. The ones I still admire, Martin Salter, Frank Field, Oona King, have all been sidelined. My old union the UCU is dominated by anti semites & fans of islam. The modern “Left” is as attractive as the 1930s Right – which it closely resembles.

I don’t have the vaguest clue who Conor Foley is. (Evidently he enoys some sort of unassailable moral advantage by involving himself in “human rights” work.) But to complain in the comments section of CiF about the comments in Harrys Place is a bit rich.

“..Hmm, I’m reminded why I don’t bother any more ….”

So why ARE you “bothering?”

“Twenty five years to the month after I just posted to Usenet I find I like the Internet less and less. ”

I must admit, I like it about the same as when I started posting on Usenet in 1988. I remember abuse I got from then that far outstrips anything I’ve gotten since (though maybe I’ve just lost my ability to wind idiots up to breaking points.) I’m attempting to find said abuse but Google Group’s ability to search old Usenet posts seems to be incredibly broken.

As many previous commenters have noted, the irony of Conor complaining about abusive commenters from the vantage point of CiF is overwhelming, where not only is mild criticism of certain people such as Milne banned (to the extend that comment threads on his articles are swiftly shut down), but abusive hatred and pornographic longing for violence on certain groups is left up.

P.

P.

I remember abuse I got from then that far outstrips anything I’ve gotten since (though maybe I’ve just lost my ability to wind idiots up to breaking points.)

Oh yeah, wanna bet? Want me to send some Pashtuns round to duff you up Paul M’looney poopoohead?

“Want me to send some Pashtuns round to duff you ”

The desire to retort in a Julian Clary voice is overwhelming.

P.

The desire to retort in a Julian Clary voice is overwhelming.

;-P

HP suffers from a rare disease called blogoschizophrenia, whereby the main contributors to the blog are reasonable, left-of-center, tolerant and sensitive people, while the comments sections have been taken over by an army of extreme rightwingers, anti-Muslim bigots or downright anti-Arab racists, who use the blog as a platform to peddle their hateful views.

This discrepancy between the blog’s authors and its audience is striking, and I admit it must be very difficult to deal with. Commendable efforts have been done by the bloggers (I recall when a word that begins with the letter T, commonly used by Muslim bashers, was forbidden), but they have been utterly inadequate.

A recent post by a major contributor to HP, in which he defended an Israeli peace activist, and which elicited responses to the effect that he wrote it because he, like the person he defended, is gay, is illustrative of how it is the commenters who set the tone of the blog, and who take upon themselves the right to censure the bloggers, sometimes using, like in that case, the crudest of ad hominems.

It may be true that commenters are equally divided between different ideological lines, but it is the rightwing Islamophobes who are the most vociferous, write the longest comments, and, yes, end up being an embarrassment to the blog.

‘The error of Cast Iron was that it stopped way too short. The Israelis should have rooted out Hamas and executed its members´ ”

I wonder if it had been modified to:-

“‘The error of Cast Iron was that it stopped way too short. The Israelis should have rooted out Hamas and arrested them”

Of course they would have got killed anyway because they would have fought back.

Shooting at any armed militia/army/terrorist with whom you are at war with is legal

“…Conor is being absurdly OTT in this which is a pity because he is actually usually a good chap to debate with….

Quite. “Absurd” is right and it is out of character, which inclines me all the more to agree with SayWhat?? above who wonders whether he’s been put up to it by CiF management. It’s strange, too, that he should get so worked up about anonymity now given some of the hate-filled rubbish about Zionism/Israel/Jews that has been published on CiF – anonymously – about which he’s never been all that bothered before. Is al Grauniad coming under pressure and has he drawn the short straw to try to distract Joe/Jane Public from some accusation or other?

Or perhaps there’s a more parsimonious explanatation – he needs a rest because he’s becoming too tired and emotional to think straight.

“HP suffers from a rare disease called blogoschizophrenia, whereby the main contributors to the blog are reasonable, left-of-center, tolerant and sensitive people, while the comments sections have been taken over by an army of extreme rightwingers, anti-Muslim bigots or downright anti-Arab racists,” etc..

This was posted by a jewhater,who links on his blog to neo-nazi
websites. To accept praise from such a person would certainly be
an embarrasment to “the main contributers” of the blog.

HB, can you please define “Islamophobe”? I am asking this as a genuine question and not to be flippant. If I disagree with the tenet of mainstream Islam, not to mention its most extreme interpretations, am I an Islamophobe? If so, am morally unsound by so being? If I disagree with Scientology just as vehemently, am I a Scientologyphobe? And would I be just as morally unsound in so being?

al Grauniad

Did you think that one up all by yourself? Of course not.

A reasonable set of comments. I would be interested to get Neil’s views on this, since my specific complaint was against his moderation (or lack of it) in one specific thread. As David and Brownie know there was a context to that discussion because I was on my way to Afghanistan that night and because the abuse was particularly unpleasant and personalised and the ‘we don’t have time to moderate’ excuse does not wash because Neil not only read all of the abusive comments, but added a set of his own.

Brownie realised things had got out of hand and subsequently apologised. Neil did not (he sent me an email telling me that Afghanistan was not a particularly dangerous place to work). I would happily go for a pint with Brownie. Morgoth and Neil not so much.

On mentioning friend’s getting killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, no I don’t do that very often. I have written about it on maybe half a dozen occasions (sometimes at the time that they were killed) out of a total of about 250+ posts at the Guardian. I have also occasionally raised it in below the line debates when people accuse me of ’shilling for the enemy’. Alex’s (repeated) claims about this are just wrong (which I doubt will stop him making them). I have also (repeatedly) said that none of us have a monopoly of grief and explicitly made reference to the fact that people in countries like Israel suffer such threats on a daily basis. I have criticised other sections of the left’s seeming inability to contextualise the impact that his has had on Israeli politics and opposed calls for boycotting Israel.

On raising the general issue of moderation in a below the line exchange at CiF well where better to do so? They have had the same problem with racist and abusive posters and they have taken steps to deal with the problem (as you acknowledged in a post yesterday). If my comments do lead you to take this issue more seriously than I will be very happy (I noted in the thread that you had taken down one reference to the Guardian being ‘filthy antisemites’).

If I wanted to shut down Harry’s Place I would sue you. What I said was that if you continued to carry racist, abusive and threatening posts and continued to misrepresent people’s views (which Neil also did in the original article) and someone else sued you I would be happy. This is because when I balance your right to free speech against my right not to be attacked and lied about here I come down on my side of the line. I would also be happy if you tightened up your moderation policy which seems a less drastic solution.

This is because when I balance your right to free speech against my right not to be attacked and lied about here I come down on my side of the line.

Just out of interest, and I don’t mean this in a nasty way, what “right” do you have not to be attacked (if we mean criticized or even vilified) given that no one can post on here or anywhere else safe in the knowledge that not one person here will pop up and call one a female genitalia or that one is talking male genitalia or that one is a copulating and unhygenic piece of excrement. This kind of invective happens a lot to pretty much everyone.

Anyway, I suggested a way of keeping people in line above but given that you brought up the issue do you have any constructive suggestions for how to moderate comments on a blog?

HB, can you please define “Islamophobe”?

Well, you’ve got Islamophobia when you ascribe to the Muslim religion certain phenomena that actually stem from other causes, such as poverty, underdevelopment, lack of democratic institutions, colonial oppression, etc., which are not necessarily related to religion.

Also, when you believe those phenomena must be taken seriously when they involve Muslims, but can be dismissed when they involve people from other religions. When a street named after a shaheed is a scandal in Palestine, but a street named after Rabbi Kahane is simply a picturesque part of the landscape in Israel.

You’ve got Islamophobia when you ask the question you ask, “If I disagree with the tenet of mainstream Islam, not to mention its most extreme interpretations, am I an Islamophobe?” Only the day before yesterday the “tenet of mainstream Catholicism” was that the Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. All religions’ tenets are monstrous, and it’s economic development, which in turn secularizes the society, that renders those tenets irrelevant.

It can be easily checked by confronting the Muslim communities in different countries. In Britain or France, the Muslims are lower-class and make trouble. In Argentina or Brazil, they’re upper-class and behave remarkably well.

Conor, I’m sure that over the years I’ve deleted thousands of comments which I considered unduly offensive or threatening. Unfortunately we can’t catch them all.

On the other hand, I think Harry Truman’s wise words about heat and the kitchen are especially relevant to blogs like ours.

conor – you will remember the late generally unlamented DSTFW blog run by the mad potty mouth Will. He daily slagged off other bloggers with the most violent lunatic prose. Most people however took no notice as he was obviously a demented nobody.

In fact I’ve found a thread cached on Google where you debated with him even though he had previously said you should be killed :

“From that Foley shite:

“visits to the constituency by celebrities and all the other usual campaigning techniques should be deployed to try and turn out a respectable vote for him.”

Kill them. Kill them all.”

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:JJMaKQIGa2wJ:drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2008/06/16/a-not-very-cunning-stunt/+foley+drinksoaked&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

Morgoth’s remarks about you are actually pretty mild by comparison with what was regularly posted there. Why are you now so outraged by HP you go out of your way to slag it off so publicly on CIF ?

What I said was that if you continued to carry racist, abusive and threatening posts and continued to misrepresent people’s views (which Neil also did in the original article) and someone else sued you I would be happy.

How very interesting and how revealing.

I’m curious Conner’s precise definition of Islamophobia and of racism?

Mullah it is the legal right not to suffer defamation. If it was in a newspaper or another form of media it would be quite straight forward. The issue is whether the same laws apply to blogs. The legal situation is fairly clear (they do) but there are a set of moral issues around whether or not someone should use them.

My basic rule of thumb would be if stuff gets said about you below the line then you either engage with it, ignore it or raise the issue in another blog (which is what I did yesterday). On the other hand if the comments have been provoked by an above the line article which mentions you by name then I think the above the line writer has an obligation to keep an eye on their own thread. Yes I realise that there are time-constraints, but if someone has taken the time to write an article, it is not unreasonable to ask that they look at it every few hours or so. To put it into human rights terminology the right to freedom of expression ‘carries with it special responsibilities’ including respect for the rights of others.

If something is written about me which is patently untrue and damaging to my reputation or wishes physical harm on me in this context then I would probably first write to the editor of the thread to complain. If that does not work then my only two options are to sue or to ignore it. Up until now I have always done the latter. The Drink-Soaked Trots used to attack me a lot, but they just came across as so weird that I doubted anyone would take them seriously. Because I have got a slightly higher opinion of the reputation of this site, I take it a bit more seriously.

Since HP strongly opposes the use of the libel laws, then it must believe in a system of self-regulation and that must involve contributors taking responsibility for their own threads. The argument ‘we are just poor bloggers and we don’t have time to do proper research before we attack people’ really does not stand up for above the line editors.

Nick – let’s leave the debate on Islamophobia for another day.

MMN: I think I deal with the loony Will point above.

Gene: I am happy to stay out of your kitchen. In fact I would be very happy if I never got mentioned on another HP thread again.

No, Conor. My *repeated* claims are that you never miss a trick to say you’re a Human Rights Worker (lost colleagues is optional), or that you have a tendancy to project. Usually in response to your turning unrelated threads to yourself.

As you’ve done here. Who put you up to this? As others have said, the stench of your sense of disconnect in using CiF, of all cesspits stalked by diseased manikens, to pursue a blogspat is sickening.

Get off your high horse and grow a pair.

Usually in response to your turning unrelated threads to yourself.
As you’ve done here.

He’s turned a thread about him into one about him? This is a bit mental.

Who put you up to this?

As is this.

Actually MMN, one more point – because it is also relevant to David’s comments above.

Will comes across as a loony, but I was not even slightly upset by that comment when I read it because of the context. I can’t remember where I was at the time, but there was no serious intent behind the remarks and none could be reasonably construed.

Similarly, when David writes ‘It is not nice to find that people are saying horrid things about you on the internet. God knows, I don’t enjoy it’ the analogy just does not stand up. I have had bombs go off very close to me in Afghanistan, I have seen burnt and mangled corpses and I have had a number of friends killed, injured and kidnapped there. I was going back there that night and I knew the same could happen to me again (a bomb did kill over 100 people a few streets away from my office when I was there and four colleagues were murdered a couple of weeks later.

The commenters on the thread knew that and they were baiting me about it. One of the people doing the baiting was the author of the original article. That is a difference.

In my comments at CiF yesterday I made reference to someone suffering a similar experience there a few years ago. I can’t remember his name, but he was an Israeli who had lost a friend in the 7/7 bombings and was writing about. He suffered horrible abuse, which I protested about at the time and I think may have lef to CiF tightening up its comments policy. Similarly when Neil Clark wrote that awful piece about the Iraqi translators I compeltely flipped (I think I called for him to be prosecuted for war crimes – mainly because to try and give him a bad night’s sleep) because what he was advocating would actually result in real people getting killed.

I think that is the difference.

It is a tragic comment on our times that so much space is devoted to Israel.

A re run of the “Jewish Question” in all but name. Obviously HP regulars need to rebut lies & occasionally point out that Israel has behaved badly.

However, in the world of body counts & human suffering, Israel does not figure.

Why are so few correspondents unconcerned with terrorist run Gaza, the Darfur genocide, the continuing oppression of non muslims in Pakistan & Nigeria, the fascist theocracy in Iran, North Korea, Communist China, & all the other dumps & hellholes ?

Why no concern about muslim advances into Western Europe ?

The neo nazis are an unpleasant & sick minority, but they will never get anywhere alone. However, if they made it up with their natural allies, then we would be in trouble —-

Alec: keep digging

Sy, this thread is about a thread he turned into a thread about him.

Conor, you’re not basking in the adoration of CiF here. You have to work for you dinner.

Conor, you’re not basking in the adoration of CiF here. You have to work for you dinner.

Inquisitor demands compliance!

On Conor’s side, I do recall his horrified response to that Neil Clark article, and he was quite restrained.

Who is Conor Foley?

Conor

You are basically a good bloke. However, you are also ever so slightly a passive aggressive.

I’m enough of a natural wind up merchant to recognise this trait in others, and I spy it in you.

The following comment I posted under the “Unbearable lightness of racism” post is illustrative of how Harry’s Place is disgraced by its commenters. The context: a fellow commenter tries to shut me up by “exposing” my identity.

==========

THE COMMENT:

Fabian from Israel
22 August 2009, 6:11 pm

I see that Alberto Miyara is again insinuating that Jews are murderers. Didn’t you grow up from that?

This is one of the ways in which Harry’s Place is embarrassed by its commenters.

Fabián is trying –as usual– to “out” me as a named person (not me, to set the record straight) so that I’ll stop commenting to avoid harming someone else, or something like that.

This is a despicable practice that should lead to Fabián’s expulsion from this blog — that would lead to it if Fabián was a leftwing anti-zionist. But rightwing Zionist nutcases and unabashed racists like Fabián himself (of “I didn’t come to Israel to live with Arabs” fame) have hijacked the blog, and nothing can be done to them, because they’re “the life of the site.”

Larker: just a blogger. It is slightly weird that my below the line comments on the thread of another blog have sparked two separate pieces here in which people continually accuse me of trying to discuss myself. Seriously guys, give me, and it, a break. I would be very happy if you could obsess about someone else for a while.

Alec: we all have emotional triggers. Neil Clark set one off on me because I spend a lot of time working with translators in war zones and know lots of people who have worked in Iraq over the last few years. It is difficult to separate out our lived experiences from the views that we hold. So when you tell me to ‘grow a pair’ my almost automatic impulse is to retort back ‘well how many war zones have you been in?’ Maybe that is me just trying out-macho you because you have implied that I am a coward, or maybe I am signalling back to you, ‘this is an issue on which I am emotionally vulnerable’.

On the fact that I draw on my personal experiences to write some of my articles, well that is what CiF pay me to do. Obviously that puts me, as well as my opinions, up for debate, but most people there seem to get that there is a line that you should not cross. My views do get attacked at CiF quite a lot, but the personalised and nasty stuff mainly comes from here (from you amongst others).

And actually I do get a fair amount of stick from pipeline conspiracy loonies (although the moderators tend to knock them out these days).

David: actually no, just aggressive, but then we all have our weaknesses don’t we?

We do!

What I’m saying, basically, is that you’re a fighty person. You seek out arguments, because you enjoy them, and because you think that there are some things which are worth arguing about. That’s why – despite going to places where people who disagree with you will try to kill you – you also hang around blogs, fighting.

No shame in that. I do it too. In fact, that’s mostly why people in comment boxes hang around there.

However, you don’t have to do any of this at all. You choose to do it.

(Because you know how fighty you are, you do your very best to be calm. But this is the essence of passive aggression)

Conor.
I was recently comapred to an autistic child by a regular commenter (belwo the line) on Liberal Conspiracy. Sunny called me a twat. So maybe you could sort this out on LC bearing in mind you’re one of the contributors.

And Conor you still bear a grudge against Euston Manifesto people based on the fact that twenty five years or so ago you had political fights with people who
accused you of being very close to the IRA. It seems to me that you’re maybe a bit too obsessive to at times.

Conor -your protestations regarding the ‘legal right not to suffer defamation’ may carry a little more weight if you began to tidy up your own household first.

“The appalling conditions in which the people of Gaza are living, the war crimes committed during Israel’s recent assault there, the illegality of the wall being constructed across the West Bank, and the attempts to change the demographics of East Jerusalem are all issues on which progressives should speak out loudly and clearly. ”
(Liberal Conspiracy)

Conor Foley guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 February 2009 15.30 GMT
“Israel’s recent brutal incursion into Gaza…”
” The foundation of the State of Israel was seen as a catastrophe for the Palestinians, whose land was stolen from them,..”
“European antisemitism was the rationale for Israel’s foundation – and Palestinians are justified in asking why they should pay the price for this ..”

You may also care to inform your colleagues at CiF that your above article of 23/2/09 still carries a link to a story from over 2 years ago which was later proved untrue -the alleged beach party shelling incident -with a very inflamatory and defamatory headline.
What’s good for you should be good for all of us.

Wa-haha, David! I’m the same.

There ain’t nowt with enjoying ao argument (in the original sense) or dedending summat passionately. But Conor denies he’s doing it and that he thinks all around him to be intellectual and moral pygmies.

There’s the passive aggression.

Conor, firstly sorry for spelling your name wrong, but on the substantive matter, critiquing HP’s comments policy as a CiF poster is redolent of a certain blindness to irony.

HB: “In Britain or France, the Muslims are lower-class and make trouble”. I think this is an insulting statement. You seem to think that if people are of a lower economic class, they will automatically be violent and troublesome. This is highly contentious, and simplistic.

Plus, to say “The Muslims are lower-class” is problematic in itself. Plenty of upper-middle class Muslims (like doctors) have done despicable things, like try to blown themselves up at airports. Similarly, plenty of upper middle-class Christians have done despicable things (like condone the sexual abuse of children under the aegis of religious instruction/protection).

Ideologies are important. They can distort people and make them do terrible things: whether that ideology is Christianity, Scientology, Nazism, Corporatism or Islam.

Bennet: I don’t bear a grudge against the Euston Manifesto. I raised issues about its interpretation of international law and critiqued it. Presumably that is what is there for. I also remember giving a plug to one of its meetings and saying that its demise left a gap for people who wanted to debate the issues of humanitarianism. That is surely different from defending myself of accusations of being a supporter of terrorism (from people who were members of an organisation that used to give ‘unconditional but critical support to the IRA’).

David: and there is also a difference between debating an issue honestly and trying to change someone’s mind, and lying about someone or misrepresenting their views.

Israelinurse: wow that was a rather selective quotation!

Conor, your latest attempt to make you centre of attention – as the steeley defender of Anat Rosenberg’s memory, and initiator of a crackdown by CiF – only adds credence to the suspicion that this is a disreputable attempt to make CiF look less worse.

You’ve failed. Nursey’s got your number, 118.

Connnor, d’you know how often you mispell my name?

The more one is in the public eye, the more one needs to watch oneself. I guess that is the price of HP’s success. If people could watch the Islamophobia or anti-Arab racism, there’d be no harm done. It’s perfectly possible to defend Israel or Zionism without it.

However, I’m not sure HP’s articles are so much more intrusive than mainstream journalism that is quite happy to stick its nose in wherever its not wanted.

onor. You also accused Euston of briefing against you though to be fair you did take back your accusation.

Conor how do you feel about Liberal Conspiracy giving space to somebody who denied Ahmadinejad was a holocast denier, who wrote ho he understood why some people were antisemitic , who cited holocaust denier Garaudy as a repuable source on Israel , and whose book contains false quotes ?

This is a despicable practice that should lead to Fabián’s expulsion from this blog — that would lead to it if Fabián was a leftwing anti-zionist. But rightwing Zionist nutcases and unabashed racists like Fabián himself (of “I didn’t come to Israel to live with Arabs” fame) have hijacked the blog, and nothing can be done to them, because they’re “the life of the site.”

If he’s outing people then he should be banned, so far as I’m concerned. But as for the “life of the site”, I don’t think so and I doubt he feels that he is. I think I’ve disagreed with about 80% of his output over the years (if not the content then the posting style, but usually both) and I’ve tended to let him know that.

I think the main problem with this sort of commentary analysis is that everyone has a rough idea of what they think the comments boxes are like and we read selectively and over-emphasize specific comments to reinforce our own view. It’s self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are critics of this blog who, I’m sure, come here to scan the comments boxes for contributions from specific visitors just so they can be appalled. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of sane commentary goes unread.

The conclusions: HP comments boxes are a haven for racists, etc., etc…

Having said that, I don’t want to see the free speech policy removed but for, say, threats or incitements to hatred or violence.

The Barbara Duster,

a case could be made that you have, again, hijacked this blog. But that’s ok: we tolerate all sorts.

HP has, I think, a freedom of speech non pareil. In fact, Lenin’s Tomb and JSF, so far as I can see, had to alter their screening policies to match it (if they ever have).

’sorry for the staccato posts.

In fact, what surprises for HP is, despite its policy, it still keeps going. I think it’s down to the remarkably ego free nature of its editors, moderators and contributors.

Never heard of Conor Foley before this spat. But he seems to have a massive chip on both shoulders. If you can’t stand the heat etc… His characterisation of Harry’s Place is completely off target. There are a few nutters here but most posters seem to me to be entirely sane and reasonable people.

Cut the kak about being just a blogger. Lester Freamon could get away with that, but you can’t. And Lester’s really Police, you’re a relief worker!

Now, I told you to grow a pair before Neil Clark came up, so stop that as well (recall that Graham was accused of calling for Zuzana’s murder). It should be clear from the context that, like Graham and Brownie, I’m separating your relief work from your online persona. One is worthy, t’other displays an implacable inability to admit a single error of judgement; and sees criticism of it as rejection of t’other’s work.

What was this about passive aggression?

Alec: I really don’t understand most of the comments in your last few posts, but you are coming across as increasingly weird.

Conor: is it your instinct to repress and ban that with which you disagree vehemently? This seems to be an interpretation of what you have said, and I wonder whether it might be so.

You might argue that you only wish to ban that which you deem harmful or mendacious, but that’s the excuse of every totalitarian in history.

Maybe that’s your fault, Conor.

I can take or leave twats, but calling someone autistic is deliberately nasty. I’m likely somewhere on the spectrum, and have been mocked for displaying behavioural patterns. I know a part Chinese who looks European, and has on occasion has overheard ‘Chinkie’ jokes.

Will you now call for LC to be shut down?

Will’s calling for me to be assaulted ‘cos I wear a fedora upset me ‘cos I *have* been assaulted for wearing a fedora.

Belm: I would draw the line pretty much where the European Court of Human Rights does, which is a slightly more restrictive position that of the US Supreme Court.

Is the argument that a blog like this should only carry one point of view and suppress any views it disagrees with, particularly if they are unpleasantly expressed (as they sometimes are – the more juvenile contributors seem unable to argue without resorting to personal abuse.)

Or is the argument that some posters hold extreme views which may in rare but occasional circumstances, lead them to incite maladjusted individuals to attack a known poster with whom they disagree?

I have personally read plenty of the former, and can see such individuals should be warned off if they persist, if only because abuse on its own is not debate. I have read none of the latter type of postings although I accept they might occur rarely and when they do should be moderated out.

Mostly though posters who object strenuously to views which differ from their own in the blogosphere, and in particular want these views expunged, seem to be oponents of a) Israel/Israeli policies and b) the BNP.

Both Israel and the BNP have legitimate legal existences and as such cannot be wished away nor can their supporters be prevented from airing their views unless they contravene specific laws.

Alec: If you are on the specturm of autism then I definitely agree that is an unpleasant insult and if someone called you it knowing that, you have every right to be both upset and offended. Similarly, calling someone a ‘Chinky’ counts as racist abuse. I have not looked at Liberal Conspiracy in over a month, but if those sorts of comments are being made and going un-moderated then, yes, it is completely unacceptable.

What I said earlier about ‘emotional triggers’ is exactly that. Someone insults me, I insult them back or someone tries to patronise me and I respond. Since we know eachother we can’t know what effect our words will have on the other person that is why it is best to stick to basic rules like:

1. attack the argument and not the person
2. don’t imply the person is making arguments in bad faith
3. don’t engage in ‘will you condemathon?’ where you make random assertions of bad things that have been done or said elsewhere and then take a failure of the person to agree with you entirely about how outrageous they are as an excuse for 1 or 2 above.

Belm: I would draw the line pretty much where the European Court of Human Rights does, which is a slightly more restrictive position that of the US Supreme Court.

So, to recap, is Conor Foley is a passive-agressive snark with totalitarian tendancies who wants to be in charge of everything, and throws his toys out of the pram whenever his latent narcissism is challenged?

Just another day in the life of the modern NGO worker.

As I have said before, morally speaking and in terms of human rights achieved, not even a million Conor Foleys are worth one Royal or US Marine.

But then “human rights” is fuck all to do with actual human rights and everything to do with liberal narcissism.

I have not looked at Liberal Conspiracy in over a month, but if those sorts of comments are being made and going un-moderated then, yes, it is completely unacceptable

Are you going to call for Liberal Conspiracy to be shut down?

Yes Conor; those were selective quotes, because they seem to me to represent the type of sloppy Left Wing Liberal mindset which may well be bread and butter for CiF readers and therefore do wonders for one’s ratings, but are actually doing a great deal of harm as far as actually solving the problems of the ME goes.
As you repeatedly say in your writings, you have no stake in the I/P conflict -I do. Whilst I do not expect you or any other foreign writer to cheerlead for Israel, I do expect you to be fair and objective if you want me to take you seriously.
For example there cannot be ‘war crimes’ until a trial has taken place and someone has been convicted. That is not the case in relation to last winter’s Gaza operation. You can write ‘alleged’ or ’suspected’ war crimes, but you have no right to cast yourself in the role of judge, jury and executor.
As regards the ‘illegal’ wall, I would expect that as someone with expertise in the field of human rights, you would at least defend my and my children’s right not to be blown up on a bus -i.e. that most basic of rights; the right to life, and maybe even understand that the wall was constructed after 4 years of Israelis constantly being denied that basic right.
If Gazans are living in ‘appalling conditions’ today -and I have no doubt that the less well connected of them are -then their government should be taken to task for its multitude of failed policies.
The demographics of E. Jerusalem are only as they are today because in 1948 Jordan expelled all of its Jewish residents -no cries of ‘ethnic cleansing’ on that point from the Left, of course.
Israel’s ‘brutal’ incursion (how exactly do you define that brutality?) into Gaza last December came after 3 1/2 years of rocket and mortar attacks upon Israeli civilians, particularly children. No mention of that brutality in your piece though. You tell us how awful your experiences were in Afghanistan and I fully empathise with you -on a level maybe more deep than most people you come across -but I would have thought that those experiences would have given you the extra insight into the problems in my country which other Western writers lack. Imagine Afghanistan with your wife and children in tow.
You understandably do not enjoy being defamed. Neither do I, and when you or any other writer accuse my country of actions such as those in the above quotes, you also accuse me because a country is not some amorphic body; it is the sum of the people who live and vote in it, the people defending it, the people for whom it is home.
Criticism is legitimate, but it must be based upon facts and take into account the entire picture. Whipping up anti-Israeli fervour through the use of sloppy slogans is irresponsible and dangerous, even if it is the current ‘flavour of the month’ in Europe, and it certainly does not help either the Israelis, the Palestinians or Jews living in Europe who have to deal with the subsequent fall-out (sometimes very threatening and frightening) from words such as those you have written above.

There are critics of this blog who, I’m sure, come here to scan the comments boxes for contributions from specific visitors just so they can be appalled. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of sane commentary goes unread.

Very true, it’s called positive selection bias, and I suspect Conor may be a victim of it. Mind you, he posts on a rag, Al Guardian, which has a rather notable Chomsky selection bias…..but I digress.

My issue with HP, is that it is slightly mislabled. The posters cluster around the centre of the Left Right of the political spectrum on the horizontal Nolan chart axis, with a slight left lean, and well to the south on the Liberal side of the Authoritarian Liberal vertical axis. I’ve noticed that there has been a drift right since I’ve posted here, HP’s become more centerist over the last 4 yrs, though there has been no drift North towards authoriarianism, with a few egregious exceptions – the Wilders eviction rather springing to mind, as well as a few illiberal brain farts by David T.

Islamophobia – meaning seeing Islam as a threat and having an open detestation of Koranic literalist ideology and its promulgation, which is of course a healthy classically liberal stance, and a good thing – are now the prevailing norm and those of us that express it are not bayed down quite so much as hitherto. I think this is partly because the Islamofascist threat is being seen for what it is rather more, and more people have become wise to it. In no small part, because of the blogosphere, including continual expose of what is routine Islamofascism, by HP. The gatekeeper role of the MSM has been broken for many and it’s been a revelation.

As for commentators, ignoring the ‘flyers’ -HP’s commentators possibly are more Left right centerist, the center of mass leaning slightly right of the posters, which is interesting.

It’s generally one of the politer blogs, which is nice.

As for commentators, ignoring the ‘flyers’ -HP’s commentators possibly are more Left right centerist, the center of mass leaning slightly right of the posters, which is interesting.

Really?

Who else is right-wing (1) here, apart from you, me and Mesquito?

I can’t think of many others at all.

(1) By right wing I mean the standard definition: if your visceral reaction to the words “social justice” is to attack the speaker with a claw hammer, then you’re right-wing.

Israelinurse: well obviously you can describe something as a crime even if no one has been convicted. Unfortunately that is the case with most crimes. On the legality of the wall, well I am basing that on the ICJ decision.

What the paragraph immediately before said was:

“I keep meaning to write a piece here about why the left should support a two state solution to the Middle East, but I never get around to it because the arguments just seem so obvious. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the creation of the state of Israel sixty years ago, it now expresses the legitimate right of its people to self-determination. This right should be exercised alongside the right of Palestinians to live within their own state, the precise borders of which need to be negotiated by the two parties. Pressing both the Israeli Government and the Palestinian’s elected leadership towards mutual recognition and supporting the forces of moderation on both sides is the only way to get that agreement. This seems to me a no-brainer.”

I then make the comments that you ascribe to me followed by:

”Yet in voicing these criticisms we need to also show that we understand that – as in all conflicts – there two sides, both of which have committed human rights violations and both of which have often behaved with stubborn unreasonableness. I can fully understand how the conditions in which people are living in Gaza has led them to support Hamas, but I also understand why the people of Israel have just voted for Benjamin Netanyahu. Too often the left seems to only be able to contextualise the former and not the latter.”

The article also says “just as we can distinguish between the need to defend ordinary Muslims who are been victimized in the current political climate and supporting the vile views of Islamic fundamentalists so we should surely be able to see why so many ordinary Jewish people regard attacks on the existence of the state of Israel as attacks on their own identity.”

It then continues:

“I am not Jewish and it is always difficult to write about issues of race, gender, ethnicity or other forms of identity from second-hand experience. I am also not a Zionist, in that I have no fixed opinion about whether or not the creation of the state of Israel was the best response to the situation in which Jews found themselves in the late 1940s. However, I do not find it all difficult to understand why so many Jews after centuries of dispossession, discrimination and persecution – which culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, should have concluded that their rights, interests and safety could best be safeguarded through the creation of a Jewish state. I can also understand why the Jewish diaspora remain concerned about the safety of that state – and their friends and relatives living in it – surrounded, as it is, by hostile neighbours one of which may soon have nuclear weapons.”

And it concludes by opposing the anti-Israel boycott. Now we can disagree on the specific assertions that I make, but you can hardly claim that I am pandering to the ’sloppy left-wing liberal mindset’. I spend the bulk of the article arguing the exact opposite!

Conor, one can fairly summarise the EHCR stance on free speech as “say what you want unless the member states decide they’d prefer you didn’t”. I don’t find that as comforting a position as you do.

That’s not true. “Wardytron” has openly fantasisted about me being killed

I have never fantasisted about anything, openly or otherwise. But while, like all decent people, I would look upon your demise as a welcome development, I have not actually threatened you, so stop blubbing, you big girl’s blouse.

Will comes across as a loony, but I was not even slightly upset by that comment when I read it because of the context. I can’t remember where I was at the time, but there was no serious intent behind the remarks and none could be reasonably construed.

Conor, does this mean that you thought Morgoth was actually going to arrange for some Pashtuns to kill you?

I can’t see any other explanation for how you can laugh off Will’s language, yet react in the way you did to Morgoth’s comment.

Mark: because I was about to go there and because I knew that there was more than a small possibility that it could happen. That is where context comes in. In the subsequent email exchange I had with Brownie he remembered how he had felt when his Dad went off to fight in the Falklands and about how he would have felt if he had come across a similar comment. Israelinurse makes the same point about living in Israel and the threat of terrorist attacks. I am not sure if you have ever been in a similar situation yourself, but most people I have met who have do not find it that difficult to empathise with the sensation.

Mark: because I was about to go there and because I knew that there was more than a small possibility that it could happen.

Conor, I’m not quite sure what you mean.

I can understand that there was more than a small possibility that you could have been beaten up, or killed, by Pashtuns in Afghanistan. In that regard, Morgoth’s comment was certainly in poor taste.

But to regard it as an actual threat, you had to have believed that Morgoth would actually have chosen to pay some Pashtuns to find you and duff you up.

Did you believe that? And do you still believe that?

Ok, I admit it. My real name is actuallly Abdul Rashid Dostum, and my cuning plan to get rid of Conor Foley failed when he recognised my sharks with fricking laser beams that I had hidden in his sandwich in Kabul Airport Duty Free.

Are you doubting my powers, Mark T? I had Robert Fisk beaten up! Surely that should demonstrate something!

(P.S. I also kidnapped Shergar, and Lord Lucan is currently staying as a guest at my holiday villa in Marrakesh)

David’s account of the private email exchange that took place between us is also rather inacurate. My complaint was about an article which started off by misrepresenting my views and then degenerated into a long series of insults and lies about me – with the writer of the original article playing a leading role in these. This included the remark quoted in which Morgoth said ‘wouldn’t it be great’ if ‘I was attacked in Afghanistan.

HP’s Comments policy says that posts may be deleted if they include ‘Abusive, violent or threatening language’ or
‘Libel – the deliberate telling of falsehoods about another person’. The thread contained both things.

David describes the comment as ‘not nice’ and ‘horrid’ and says that the author of it should be ashamed of himself. He – rather weakly – then tried to draw a parallel with his own experiences on other occasions. But he has completely ignored the substance of my complaint which was why were a series of comments, which were in clear breach of HP’s own Comment policy, not moderated at the time (the reason for this is that the moderator was one of the ones making them).

You know, it’s almost as if Conor conjured up Israelinurse to spew conjoined paragraphs of her usual 50-year-old whataboutery to take the heat off him.

P.

This included the remark quoted in which Morgoth said ‘wouldn’t it be great’ if ‘I was attacked in Afghanistan.

Not true.

The comment was

Is it me or is Foley turning into another Robert Fisk? Should we arrange for some Pashtuns to beat the shit out of him?

Now as I have already said, the comment was in poor taste, given the prospect of you quite possibly being beaten up by Pashtuns.

But to repeat – it can only be taken as a threat if you seriously believed that Morgoth had the genuine inclination and wherewithal to track down some Pashtuns and persuade them to do the dastardly deed.

Did you believe that?

recall that Graham was accused of calling for Zuzana’s murder

Do you know I don’t remember this episode at all. Was it on this website or on some other one not worth reading?

I have not forgotten that Catherine Bennet’s nasty class-based attack on me however. But I don’t think she should be banned.

I think that Morgoth gets hysterical and over-the-top too. He’s can’t help it, he’s from Northern Ireland; they’re all like that. But his remark was obviously a satirical play on the whole Fisk incident. Probably more near the knuckle than Chris Morris’s remark “Robert Fisk: How I smashed my own face in shouting ‘Don’t help me, I deserve this’ in front of thousands of bewildered refugees”, but still, it’s hardly something to write on Comment is Free about.

Whatever Morgie’s problems, and Dog knows I’ve had my arguments with him, at least he’s (a) an equal opportunity hater of all religions and (b) occasionally funny, which is more than can be said for the droning, unfunny, pointless and boring LittleGreenFootballesque true Islamophobes who have begun to frequent HUH more and more lately.

P.

Conor I agree with MarkT, the violent vitriol Will handed out to you on that DSTFW thread was far more unpleasant than anything ever on HP, but now all you say is that “oh he’s just an idiot and I ignored it” while apparently Morgoth makes you reely reely upset. This is crying wolf garbage of the first order.

Here’s some more of what Will said about you on that thread I referenced earlier :

“back to you Foley shithead and clagnut tory vermin supporter.”

You are making a laughing stock of yourself here – sorry.

Mark: thanks for the correction. Did I think that Morgoth was actually going to do it, of course not. He was joining in a generalised chorus of abuse which the editor of the thread had initiated. However, his comments clearly breached the HP talk policy (as did several others) and so the email that I sent to David, Brownie and Neil complained about this. I would still be interested to know – from all three of them – why the policy was not enforced on this occasion and – in Neil’s case – whether he thinks his actions (and inactions) were justified or not?

Brownie actually immediately apologised for what had happened and – as stated above – there are no hard feelings between us.

Conor, stop it. The “editor of the thread”, as you bizarrely put it, initiated nothing. He wrote a blog post, upon which the public were able to comment. Any talk of initiating abuse is piss; it was a blog post with a comment facility. Stop with this bonkers paranoid stuff about rabid anti-Conor Foley commenters being unleashed upon Conor Foley, in a co-ordinated anti-Conor Foley campaign organised by a dangerous and sinister anti-Conor Foley group. It was a throwaway comment on a blog post, that’s all.

MMN: well I did actually try to respond to Will a few times, but he just kept deleting my posts and so I gave up.

Again, my complaint on this occasion was aimed at the moderators of this blog and concerned a string of abusive messages which were specifically focussed on the fact that I was about to go to Afghanistan. My response to them was not to sue Harry’s Place but to send an email to the editors and take the issue up with them directly. I thought that was a fairly reasonable way of going about things and had David and Neil responded in the same way as Brownie I had I would probably have just fumed a bit in Afghanistan and then forgotten about it.

The debate that we are having here was sparked by some beneath the line comments I made at another website, which was concerned with the subject of people who use the cloak of anonimity to tell spread lies and abuse.

wardytron: the orginal article was just silly. I don’t know why Neil mentioned me in it at all. It was about how certain people would oppose a military intervention in Zimbabwe even if it was the only way to stop a genocide. He then quoted from me on another topic, but since he juxtaposed my name with that opinion it might have seemed that this was a view which I held (which I don’t). There then followed a series of comments about me – including one that I was a border line antisemitic conspiracy theorist. Since I am not, and the allegation is libellous, that should have been removed. Instead it stayed and was followed by a whole load more abusive comments including the one made by Morgoth.

It is fairly easy to run a reasonable website, no one here has yet defended Morgoth’s remarks (apart from Morgoth) so why were they just not taken out at the time? End of story.

Conor would you mind providing evidence of the abusive messages? Point us to the correct thread because right now it just seems like you are going on and on about not much. I’m sure it would help move the debate on

Maw: it is easy enough to find it and I think that we have probably exhausted the discussion on this issue so I am turning in now.

Maw – here.

Thanks for responding Conor.

Ok and thanks Mark T

Brownie:

If he’s outing people then he should be banned, so far as I’m concerned. But as for the “life of the site”, I don’t think so and I doubt he feels that he is. I think I’ve disagreed with about 80% of his output over the years (if not the content then the posting style, but usually both) and I’ve tended to let him know that.

Fabián keeps referring to me as Alberto Miyara, who, as you can easily verify, is an existing person, so that either he believes I’m Alberto Miyara and is trying to out me, or he knows I’m not and is trying to blackmail me into stop commenting to avoid harming someone else. In either case his behavior is despicable and embarrassing to HP and yes, he should be banned, or at least disciplined.

The question is, why isn’t he? The answer I find is that there is an establishment in the HP commentariat, and that Fabián belongs to that establishment. That is why, in spite of his open anti-Arab racism and his nasty behavior towards another commenter, he can’t be touched. (Or will I be proved wrong?)

In that context, Conor’s criticism makes a lot of sense. HP’s bloggers may have all those good intentions the way to hell is proverbially paved with, but due to the massive presence of Fabián-like commenters the blog’s image is that of a sanctuary for Islamophobes and rightwing Zionist zealots.

The question is, why isn’t he? The answer I find is that there is an establishment in the HP commentariat, and that Fabián belongs to that establishment.

Utter bollocks.

The question is, why isn’t he?

Because you’re boring, obsessive, unwanted, unliked, unamusing and unwelcome. Piss off, for good, and you’ll find you’re soon forgotten about, if that’s what you want. It’s what I want.

“the blog’s image is that of a sanctuary for Islamophobes and rightwing Zionist zealots.”

In which case, Barbara Duster, for characters like you too.

Because you’re boring, obsessive, unwanted, unliked, unamusing and unwelcome. Piss off, for good, and you’ll find you’re soon forgotten about, if that’s what you want. It’s what I want.

Thanks for providing further evidence of how nasty commenters disgrace Harry’s Place.

THis is so fucking ridiculous.

It’s beyond stupidity.

Just like the utterly ludicrous rift with Sunny when Liberal Conspiracy and Pickled Politics share so much in common with Harry’s Place.

Conor Foley is, in fact, a liberal interventionist. Strip away all the arguments, all the caveats, all the vile slurs – what remains is the irrefutable fact that Conor Foley SUPPORTED INTERVENTION – and CONTINUES to support that ideal, however much he may think it’s been compromised and betrayed by other global events (such as the Liberation of Iraq).

I’m so fucking sick and tired of people like Sunny and Conor who represent so much that is GOOD – obsessing and pissing their characters away on the futile and frivolous.

Look, I’m a long-time reader and commenter on Harry’s Place. I rarely comment these days – mainly because I have two young children and, therefore, better things to obsess about…

But part of it is the fact that it’s a very difficult comment box to deal with.

At least Benji has been dealt with – that has helped – but most threads get hijacked by the same people arguing the same hatreds, for their own agendas.

And this is fine. Because HP has grown. It gets a huge coverage. And one of the the things I liked about HP was that it never became an echo chamber – even when it meant mostly listening to Sonic Vs Oxfordian drivel…

I was banned from Crooked Timber for questioning a commenter who described Saddam’s Iraq as “arguably a Police State” – John Quiggin didn’t like my response because he felt it was treading old political ground.

It was then I realised that it was better to support the HP policy on comments – even if it meant I would avoid those same comments boxes so long a refuge – than see myself or Harry’s Place become the absurd, hypocritical, delusional, and utterly ridiculous ECHO CHAMBER that Crooked Timber and their affiliates are.

In short – Conor, YES you’ve been treated despicably in the comments here. But never by me. And never worse than how DavidT has been treated by commenters on Pickled Politics…

In fact I remember emailing DavidT years ago asking why he didn’t ban the vile anti-semite known mostly as WJ Phillips – because all those posts were attacking DavidT SOLEY on his being a JEW! DavidT, at the time, insisted on the same policy he held for Benji…

And in some ways you are right. In the end we got rid of those two cockroaches by a concerted effort at discouragement.

In the meantime DavidT sucked up as much racist and personal abuse as can be expected of any person. In fact all of us on Harry’s Place who describe themselves as “Liberal Interventionists” or “Centre-Left Humanitarian Interventionists”…

Or, more fucking plainly, those of us who looked back at the atrocities of Bosnia, Rwanda and Iraq in the 90’s and said to ourselves “You know what – the West has the only power, and the moral duty to do something about this shit. And doing so is a GOOD THING as long as we DO IT rather than choosing our Son Of a Bitch”

And that’s YOU, Conor. You agree.

But standing up for this shit has become a bit too tough. It’s easier to attack HP’s commenters…

‘Because you’re boring, obsessive, unwanted, unliked, unamusing and unwelcome. Piss off, for good, and you’ll find you’re soon forgotten about, if that’s what you want. It’s what I want.’

Best comment in this whole thread. Quite briliant.

I think you meant “looney ‘toons”, not “looney tunes”.

Maven

I find it interesting that Edmund Standing felt he couldn’t make free expression of issues which seemed to revolve around Islamist extremism. I think that might still be an issue that floats HP close to criticism. But that’s just to stifle legitimate debate.

Agree with almost everything you said. Seeing off ‘hate posters’ without moderating them is just what CI(F) lacks It is CI(F) that should change its moderating policy – not HP.

Connor Fowly has behaved badly on that CIF thread. Hearing about the incident that his wife was upset about mitigates to a certain extent but that is all.

Harry’s Place has no obvious improvements except perhaps a dedicated site with your own Internet programming and that would need a sponsor/s. A much larger text box would be appreciated very much. So that I can see at a glance what I have written. Preview compensates but not really a solution.

However, a sponsor is likely to change the site into something that you may not want to be.

The Guardian download problems are mostly a result of advertisements rather than comments. And their security and banning mechanisms also take quite a toll.

I often wonder how HP manages with the moderating.

Must be a Herculean task

Foley

If I wanted to shut down Harry’s Place I would sue you.

You do not, not because of any commitment to free speech, but because you would lose and end up paying HP’s legal expenses.

I would also be happy if you tightened up your moderation policy which seems a less drastic solution.

Seeing the bilge you posted at CiF, I hardly think you in the position to be giving lessons to HP.

Whatever happens to you in your travels, I’d not mourn you.

Conor returns to this same point over and over; that it’s an obligation to moderate and if you don’t/can’t you should close down or be shut down.

As a frequent commentator on CIF, who is so frequently deleted for his remarks regarding the various court Jews they use there to defame Israel and other Jews (and pretty much any comment about Islam’s negative side) among other issues (the catch-all “off-topic” seems to be a trigger to delete just about anything) that I think I am on a watch list of sorts I am torn sometimes between the idea of moderation or not.

For example, I sometimes feel it would be better to leave the vast range of anti-Semitic comments that are the bread and butter of many of the regulars commenting on that blog in place so that the bias, xenophobia, hatred and sheer, utter ignorance are on display, like a collection of particularly smelly turds normally found only on blogs of the Aryan Brotherhood, or Swedish newspapers, and their ilk.

And yet – when you see unmoderated blogs – and a good example, sadly enough, is the “On Faith” blog at the Washington Post, where anti-Semitic scum comment freely, frequently, and at length any time there is an article dealing with Judaism you realize that in in the interest of any kind of useful or even just interesting or amusing discussion, moderating comments may be very necessary.

The major problems with CIF’s moderation are the clear use of personal bias by specific moderators – you can easily tell when there has been a change of shift, for example, and suddenly pro-Israel comments begin disappearing by the dozen – and the sheer bloody humorlessness of the Stalinistas running the thing.

AKUS:

It is not only pro-Israel comments that get deleted; I have been banned for a series of comments on an I/P thread that pointed out explicitly what the British are doing in Afghanistan, some of which included links to Guardian articles. No criticism of Imperialism is allowed !

Have you been following the threads on “Etiquette”? A lot of comments have been about the issue of moderation. But the editor’s replies have totally ignored these comments (a total lack of etiquette, methinks), as they always do when there is an open thread dealing with CF itself.

I think that Morgoth gets hysterical and over-the-top too. He’s can’t help it, he’s from Northern Ireland; they’re all like that.

‘All’? ……..Essentialising Bogtrotters…. not quite PC now, is it?

Conor, the point of those anecdotes was that neither my nor her mockers knew our ‘hidden’ history. At the milder end of the spectrum, we are fully aware of our condition and mocking it is like mocking someone’s skin colour.

Now I’ve finally seen Moggie’s comment, I’d compare it to Chris Morris’ paedophile broadcast (cf. his one about Fisk). Nowhere near as bad as Will’s rant, and your dismissal of that is cringe-making. Admit it, someone put you up to this.

Where are your controllers now?

Whoopsie.

Graham, you drew attention to the fact that Zuzana was the daughter or post 1956 Hugarian Soviet placemen, and that Clarkie was on very shaky ground.

That’s hardly threatening to kill her.

Conor -22/8, 10;25
‘but you can hardly claim that I am pandering to the ’sloppy left-wing liberal mindset’. I spend the bulk of the article arguing the exact opposite!’
Quite; and somewhere in the middle you spoilt it by using exactly those types of innacurate and defamatory cliches so popular with CiF readers.

The point is that you are upset by a comment made by Morgoth which, if we are completely honest about it, whilst possibly unpleasant, was not realistically likely to materialise into anything concrete. Upon that basis, you advocate tighter moderation in order to protect what you see as your rights.
I am asking you to extend this to the bigger picture and realise that the irresponsible use of phrases such as ‘illegal wall’, ‘brutal actions’ ’stolen land’ etc. whilst maybe not as direct and immediately identifiable as the comments you are upset about, have an even more pernicious effect on some people’s lives with actual practical repercussions.
Unfortunately, you seem to be unable to understand the connection between the two. You reserve the right to be offended by a couple of unpleasant sentences on a blog which caused you emotional upset, and demand tighter moderation as a result, but you cannot or will not see that your own sometimes lax turn of phrase is no different. It comes across as ‘one rule for me and another for the rest’, which I find particularly unfortunate coming from someone in your field.

And Moggie was hardly orchestrating an attempt on Conor’s life.

[quote][quote]I think that Morgoth gets hysterical and over-the-top too. He’s can’t help it, he’s from Northern Ireland; they’re all like that.[/quote]

‘All’? ……..Essentialising Bogtrotters…. not quite PC now, is it?[/quote]

I’m sure you’ve heard the Irish exaggerate.

P.

Whoops! Internet comment is fun!

The debate that we are having here was sparked by some beneath the line comments I made at another website, which was concerned with the subject of people who use the cloak of anonimity to tell spread lies and abuse.

How seriously should lies and abuse on a website be taken? If they’re from the commenters in threads, they are part of the white noise of the internet. If TwerpFace says “Conor Foley is xxx” on a thread, I can’t see how that would hurt your reputation. Everyone, including high court judges, should know that that is meaningless shouting. Experienced internetters will recognise that TwerpFace is as reliable as a paper condom.

When it comes to the blog post at Gary’s Space saying, “Conor Foley is xxx” – well, unless there is harder evidence, eg the BBC or a newspaper saying this, it’s about as meaningless. People do google searches and the “xxx” accusation turns up only on pages that are quoting Gary’s Space. Unless you can drill down to something more substantive, again, it is just baseless abuse. That is not pleasant, but I can’t see how your reputation is hurt with anyone who has a grain of internet savviness. (Memo to govt:- as well as teaching computing literacy, teach internet literacy, ie don’t believe 99% of what you read in cyberspace).

I agree it’s nasty stuff and it’s reasonable to be pissed off about it. I think we’re in a new culture that is just developing, about how internet conversations should go. They have started moderating more at HP and I’m rather torn about this. I find it educational to read the likes of Lee Barnes, mad believers in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Haters of all things Muslim as the likes of them don’t normally come my way. On the other hand, sometimes I wander into a thread, and it’s a river of sewage. I think moderating is subjective – when some people are really stinking up the place you hose pipe them away.

MindTheCrap – agreed about deletions that show Britain in a bad light, although there is a certain bizarre randomness about this that makes me believe that either there are “watchlists” or certain moderators keep an eye out for certain posters they don’t like and will use any or no excuse to delete comments, including, as you point out, references to other articles in the Guardian, or even citing the words of the author from a previous article – and sometimes form the very article being discussed!

I have recently had reason to cite extracts from Gilbert’s “Churchill and the Jews” about the ME and the Tredegar pogrom, all of which is actually available on the web, and the comments were immediately deleted – I think there is a moderator who does not want Churchill’s support of Zionism shown.

Equally strange is the habit of banning people but leaving their comments in place on a thread after they have disappeared from that poster’s profile – there seem to be two systems at work that are not fully synchronized – the archival mechanism for posters’ comments, vs the archive system for the threads themselves. One would think that both sets of comments should remain or be disappeared.

More and more frequently, comments literally vanish with no sign they were ever posted, and it also seems to me that there is some secret pre-moderation going on where comments are removed even before publication.

Whereas a poster was able to put up a comment citing a completely fake CIA report about Israel that originated from PressTV, which stayed up for hours and was “recommended” no less than 7 people before being deleted because I drew attention to it on another thread.

So moderation should have a standardized set of rules and procedures.The moderators themselves, it seems to me, need to be much more carefully selected and, if you will, moderated – if CIF, for example, is trying to present a certain party line, its randomness gets frustrating even for the Israel-bashing faithful.

And Moggie was hardly orchestrating an attempt on Conor’s life.

True and I think even Mr Foley must realise by now that it was an own goal to show everybody that you take the hyperbole of some dickhead on the internet so seriously. More interesting (to me anyway) is whether a blog should allow the tactic of continual harassment of one individual by another.

“Because you’re boring, obsessive, unwanted, unliked, unamusing and unwelcome. Piss off, for good, and you’ll find you’re soon forgotten about, if that’s what you want. It’s what I want.”

That’s an incitement to assault, that is. HP should be shut down.

AKUS:
I quoted – on CIF – a NY Times article from March 2008 that discussed a poll showing that a majority Palestinians supported violence. Someone then posted a comment saying that such support is understandable after Cast Lead (Dec 2008). I posted a polite comment stating that the reader had obviously assumed that that the NYTimes article was from 3/2009 and not 3/2008, but my comment was deleted! All my attempts to delete the erroneous comment or to get my explanation reinstated were unsuccessful.

True, Graham, but Mogs, one man mentions C only on those topics he willingly places himself in public on. We have both been pursued across different threads/blogs on unrelated subjects with far more venom; eg Will, as has C. Yet he forgives that bucky-swilling, lumpen Geordie loonie.

And all that pales into insignificance against the casual denigration and empathy-failure of an entire nation-group ‘cos of the perceived misdeed of its state, as Nursey has shown C engages in.

I know which I object to most.

@Conor, I’m glad I looked in here because it seems in taking you at your word on CIF, I owe Margoth an apology when I agreed (with you) that I didn’t condone “such posts” — That’s the comment (clarified by Mark T) for which you want this site shut down ?? I’d post you on CIF, Conor, but as you know threads only stay up for 3 days and my posts seem to be on a seventy-THREE hour timer at the moment !!
re: CIF’s TP and the often selective implementation of – Almost as funny as Morgoth’s posts on this thread…but not quite.

@TeaCup, should she stray near — on CIF apparently asked which site I was referring to.
I’m surprised you had to ask since you were also on that blog – You do remember BNH, dontcha ?? A “remarkable” blog in many ways during it’s hey-day – I think no less than five of their “old boys/girls” ended up witting above the line on CIF !
As it turned out not everyone supported some of the drek written about significant others on there – I was told about it about 17 /18 months ago……
WRT LaRit, if she doesn’t want exposure might I suggest she reconsiders having her details put into the public domain from which “that link” also appeared on CIF, apparently, came from, namely – YouTube!

repunzal! It’s about time you showed up. What have you been? With what you know it’s about time you pulled your finger out and helped your people.

As for laRit, CiF stood by and allowed her to write the antisemitic filth she did. It did nothing to stop that. It certainly didn’t ban her and other posters have been banned for much, much less.

Therefore for Conor Foley/CiF to bleat about lack of moderation here smacks at least of hypocrisy if not something rather more sinister given the BNH business.

When Laritournelle posted about this Rachmanesque Jewish landlord she said she had on I/P threads, what does Conor Foley think she was up to ? At best, her posts were deleted, but she wasn’t banned.
LaRitournelle was Jew-bating. When she wasn’t banned, CIF was encouraging Jew-baiting. If anyone behaves intemporately in the face of that, don’t tell me that has nothing to do with CIF. There has been plenty of mobbing on CIF and “poor” LaRitournelle is involved in it. Rather a strange coincidence to see Shazlee turn up all of a sudden on Kate Hudson’s thread.

Repunzal, I’m with MITNAGED. What’s BNH ? Are they anything to do with the mobbing or the way we get treated by the moderators on CiF?

Does anybody know anything about the CiF Moderators working for a private company and who it is?

I’ve had lots of problems with the CiF moderators and I just accepted the decisions they made but I was harrassed myself by LaRitournelle, Count Dotty in his many guises, and it became obvious that CiF had no interest in keeping Dotty off. As soon as he started posting under new monikers other readers kept telling the Moderators he was back. So it was obvious the Moderators weren’t interested in keeping Dotty off.

I used to have Shazlee accuse me constantly of trolling and mobbing. It wasn’t a secret that there was a group of them involved in mobbing particular posters.

I haven’t bothered posting on CiF for about six months

I was once told by a friend who worked for GMG that its internet activities were run from South Africa. Maybe that includes modding. In the end, who cares? Whoever provides the mods at CIF the result is the same.

BTW, I have no idea who Moveanymountain is at CiF but I do admire him/her

repunzal, no worries!

paul, Moveanymountain is a star.

Whoops, that was me.

Glaister I’m sorry to note that the mobbing you had at the hands of LaRit, Shazlee and Dotty have driven you away from CiF. The former two do seem to lead charmed lives there whereas others are blocked for very little by comparison.

Why not go back there? I am sure that Conor Foley at least, in his new found role as spokesman for the got at, and with his obvious desire to see CiF’s moderation policy enforced properly and rigorously would be proud to come on line and back you up against laRit and the other haters. Who knows perhaps even Matt Seaton might join him to rap the haters’ knuckles.

(Well, I can dream, can’t I?)

“..don’t engage in ‘will you condemathon?’ …”

Strange, that. I thought CiF positively reinforced it to try to frighten off anyone who argues with their anti-Israel stance. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that sort of lunacy which drove Glaister away. The infamous Shazlee is a wind-up merchant par excellence in that regard but I haven’t noticed anyone but the people he’s offended taking issue with it.

Perhaps you could do another good deed for humanity and pull him up about it when he next posts in that vein.

Abdul Rashid Dostum – “Moveanymountain is a star.”

Isn’t it inevitable that anyone praised on HP is banned on CiF?

Shazlee is a woman and so is LaRit. Personally I have no idea why either of them is not banned. But I think CiF relies on readers reporting offensive posts. So if the general culture of CiF is viciously anti-Semitic, and it is, then their posts won’t get reported. Perhaps the solution is to read and report more often.

I’d really muich prefer it if people didn’t speculate as to the identity of the moderators at CiF. I’m not interested in having people ‘outed’ on a thread attached to one of my posts.

So if the general culture of CiF is viciously anti-Semitic, and it is,

No it’s not. I can’t much stand the place and there is a lot of inane rubbish written about Israel at CiF, and not just in the comments, but the above is hyperbolic nonsense. It wouldn’t be true even if every thread at CiF were about I/P. Given this is not even nearly the case, it makes the accusation even more absurd.

Seriously, there is enough to criticise about CiF without having to make shit up.

Whatever happens to you in your travels, I’d not mourn you.

Philo-Semite, whatever you might think about Conor, he at least walks the walk. I admire him for that and for much of the work he has done in the past and continues to do. Try to remember this is a fucking blog and we’re all pisisng in the wind the next time you want to regale us of how you might feel in the event Conor comes to harm in one of the various war-zones he works in.

OT

Different question about Cif: who decided the blog roll? It’s v v small, hasn’t changed in a year and has what might be considered in some circles a somewhat Hundalian bias. Certainly has helped his traffic rank but might explain why the PP comments section has gone from the 2nd best on the web to somewhere below Cif…

With Milne at the helm this blog would never get linked by the Graun, but a more diverse selection of opinion (e.g. from a rotating list of links) would be an improvement.

If anyone knows who to email at Cif with this suggestion I’d be grateful as I couldn’t find anything on the site.

Brownie – “No it’s not. I can’t much stand the place and there is a lot of inane rubbish written about Israel at CiF, and not just in the comments, but the above is hyperbolic nonsense. It wouldn’t be true even if every thread at CiF were about I/P. Given this is not even nearly the case, it makes the accusation even more absurd.”

Actually I think it is. CiF itself, in the sense of the part run by the Guardian, is only mildly anti-Semitic I think. I don’t think that lightly or casually, but from years of reading it. I would compare it to some guy I read talking about Patrick Buchanan back in the day before Pat made his views on Jews clear – he said that you can ignore Bitberg, you can excuse his carbon-dioxide vans views, you can pass over his views on Israel, but you can’t ignore all of it put together. Nor can you look at CiF’s record of pushing the views of anti-Semites, Islamist terrorists, and demonising Israel at every opportunity without drawing the obvious conclusion. Not to mention their one-sided banning policy which means open justification of anti-Semitism or even open anti-Semitism is excused but anyone who defends Israel *will* get banned in the end.

That tolerance leads to the general culture of CiF which is undeniably viciously anti-Semitic.

“Seriously, there is enough to criticise about CiF without having to make shit up.”

If only I were.