I have just emailed the moderators, but cannot really be too bothered to negotiate or anything like that; not this time. I'll probably quit CiF. It's not that surprising: It's been turned into a thoroughly unintellectual forum for churnalism in which Nick Cohen's junk has probably not even been the worst of all (still very bad though).
It's CiF's insane decision to delete today's comments and place me under premoderation (like some reoffender), so there's not much I can do. If any posters from CiF are reading, greetings; I'll be watching, even if not posting...
UPDATE:
It seems like intransigence has won the day. I have had several exchanges with two moderators from CiF, and despite the fact that they have reinstated my comments on Nick Cohen's thread and have not provided shred of evidence that I have violated their talk policy, they have persisted with premoderation of my comments (citing irrelevant and meaningless technical aspects of premoderation). None of this explains why my card has been marked, but it seems the moderation team are unable to concede that they committed an error on Sunday.
I have therefore stopped posting on Comment is Free.
Considering how oversatuated with non-descript and repetitive articles it has become, it is probably not a bad thing that I have now stopped posting; the only regret I have is that I will no longer be able to exchange ideas with a number of posters on CiF (who were always more interesting than the articles themselves bar a few exceptions).
UPDATE II:
Following some serious hassling and pointing out the insanity of CiFs stance over the course of nearly two weeks, they have oh-so-graciously withdrawn the premoderation status. Still apprehensive about posting, though I have used it to attack the libertarian madness of turning everything into stuff.
9 comments:
Well, it's frustrating but I have tended to get away with criticising the writer by making ironical comments. On the whole, this works. Yet with somebody as extraordinarily dogmatic, dour and oversensitive as Seumas Milne, that doesn't work.
I'm now convinced Milne scans all commments himself. Once when I even raised the issue of how Milne's association with Straight Left might just slightly comprimise his right to condemn imperialism in Afghanistan I achieved something you haven't in your struggle with Cohen.
'This comment was deleted for making defamatory statements'
Strangely, the comment commenting on why my comment was deleted was later changed to Comment deleted. So perhaps, after the rage subsided, the Guardian realised it wasn't defamatory after all.
Even so, my latest second efffort was removed. If you can spot anything constituting a 'personal attack' on Milne here, let me know.
The whole idea of 'personal attack' is ambiguous because if 'the personal is political', as it is for Milne, then anything he regards as damaging his 'credibility' as a journalist is going to be censored.
So comment is free on the issues and disagreement OK unless you try to set the views of the journalist in their broader context to allow people to make their own minds up on what spin or angle is inherent in what is, let's face it, propaganda.
They should rename it,
'Propaganda is cheap, comment is unfree'.
This is what I wrote.....
'Milne has curious views on how Afghanistan fits into the geopolitical jigsaw and actually gave a 'speech' recently that sounds rather like something that Orwell might have imagined.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AnS07VT3-k
Milne courageously confronts hypocrisy by invoking what John Pilger actually calls the 'Orwell Rule', of inverting public statements to arrive at the truth.
After all, in Oceania the Party arrived at truth in a similar way by saying 'war is peace, ignorance is strength and slavery is freedom'.
The 'Orwell Rule' could be applied to the old joke in the Czech Republic ' Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man but Communism is the complete opposite'.
Anyway, Milne deals with Afghanistan and the 'war on terror' and goes on about the USA and NATO , the West, etc being more than hypocritical but 'turning truth upside down'.
Milne points out that Russia did not attack Georgia but that Georgia and that was directly caused by them being backed by US and Israeli arms. This is true.
But, hark, it's not just the 'direction of the attack !
From Afghanistan to Iraq and into Georgia, imperialism has 'followed a decade of NATO expansion through the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe right up against the Russian border.... in an aggressive expansion against its former Cold War enemy and we've seen where that ends up'.
Milne repeat the word 'former' twice, as though the present were haunted by the ghosts of the Soviet Union's past.
The conflation of the Soviet Union with Russia in the phrase 'former Cold War enemy' makes it quite clear that the reversal of the Soviet Union's dominance is a major cause of the world ills now and has contributed to the situation we are now in with Georgia and Afghanistan.
Naturally, with Poland in NATO and with troops in Afghanistan. Perhaps, this part of Central Europe, as most Poles regard it, would be better off as part of 'Eastern Europe' which Milne mentions in the same breathless tone as the Soviet Union as if it were merely natural.
That is not the result of an occupation that was never wanted nor consented to by the majority of the people who happened to live there. But they were reactionary Poles anyway so who nobody should give a fig about them, not least as Brzezinski was a 'Russophobe' Pole.
Yet a very odd thing is that Poland has not been the target of a militant Islamist terror attack on the Al Qaida model, which is curious because it has sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan than Spain which was targeted in the Madrid Bombings.
By the way, Milne does seem to have this certain power to get away with what he wants with dishing out abuse but reacts with shrill hysteria even at the most
Milne does not represent the democratic left. The speech reveals him as a raucous ideologue whose worldview is based on defending the Soviet Union and a terminal incapability to accept its demise.
This is important for those on the left such as yourself because when people think of a left that is opposed to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan they will have a composite image of Galloway, platform propagandists like Milne and 'We're all Hezbollah now'.
These people are not constructive in any way and their outlook is based soley on hatred.
The important thing in a democracy and a free society is to dissect propaganda that aims to persuade by packing the propaganda with cant terms and various psychological mechanisms that deal with what 'really' motivates people.
Rather than leading to open debate, this can lead to people believing what they want to hear and want to believe at a time when the world is becoming ever more dangerous because on insane belief systems that can lead to the rationalisation for massive acts of violence.
The fact that Milne knows this but thinks it's OK if 'the other side' does it means that he's worse than the people he criticises. That RESPECT or Milne has no 'real power' is irrelevant. If people are locked up in a hate infested world of pure propaganda then they are trying to mobilise people on that basis.
It discredits those who oppose Afghanistan and Iraq on principle and not on the expedient and psychopathological realpolitik of my enemy's enemy is my friend'and I don't give a toss if they are murderous lunatics just as long as they kill aid workers, oft targets and just stop and discredit the US 'war machine'.
It's possible to believe that Afghanistan and Iraq are wars that can never succeed and should not have been launched without then trying to stoke up a fake indignant outrage that, if believed, would give alienated Islamists no reason not to blow up British citizens.
If the 'war on terror IS terror;, as Pilger has it, and one imputes a demonological imperative to the USA and Britain, then, regrettably, terror becomes a tactic in the assymetric global resistance movement of 'Muslims' against 'the West'.
I oppose these wars and the way radicals are trying to exploit it to rationalise further violence by conflating all Islamists insurgents into one global resistance because that's exactly what the neoconservatives do but seeing all of it as the work of Satanic evil and seamless totalitarian threats.
I've just about had enough of Cif myself.
Too many trolls and suburban philistines jumping on anything that looks remotely intellectual.
To be honest with you, I have yet to find a good forum on the whole web. Scary.
Questionnaire
Hi Karl, hi Questionnaire.
CiF has never been a radically intellectual forum. It once - for a relatively brief period - provided a forum for interesting discussion; for exchanging informal ideas. All this has been further curtailed by unreasonable censorship, swamping of CiF with meaningless articles, and frankly too many comments, most of which are junk.
There are two handfuls of commenters who I really appreciate; sometimes a couple of others make good points, but that's it. The majority are made up of inoffensive, 'sensible' and philistine comments (as Questionnaire aptly describes) or of obscure bigots (almost more interesting).
The web is a difficult forum. Its seemingly inexhaustible scope should theoretically provide enough for real radicalism, yet in its appearance it is more restrictive than the printed word. It's self-serving. But of course it's also vital for research et al.
Karl, can I recommend a Polish writer? I recently discovered him: Andrzej Stasiuk. You'll like him. He describes the tragedy of modernity for east-central Europe.
Unrelated: Is is surprising that in our dark times of Cold Play, Snowpatrol, the Kaiser Chiefs, X-Factor, pseudo-fair trade, BBC News 24, Nigella Lawson etc we are faced with a nothingness where there should be questions. The most frightening thing is the absence of questions.
The problem is there always remains that feeling on CiF and similar forums of 'I can't let the bastards get away with it'...
Been banned myself. Never any suggestion that the censors had found anything I had said that was not factually correct, or plain rude or indeed that they ever contemplated "negotiation". In a way I suppose it is a badge of honour that wahat you say, particularly but not exclusively about Yugoslavia, was so unanswerably right that they can only censor.
9%Growth
Neil, thanks for your kind words. I had no idea you had been banned...in fact, come to think of it, I haven't seen your CiF moniker around for a while. Is it a final ban then?
To be honest, CiF has become unusable anyway. Many of the threads are inundated by boring commenters who churn out the same old middle-of-the-way platitudes.
The most interesting threads have always been the 'smaller' ones with a small number of posters.
But I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who was put in front of a CiF kangaroo court. Same here, no real explanation, no evidence that I have broken the talk policy. In fact, they even reinstated the two comments they deleted (because it was unjustified), but still my pariah status remains. Bizarre. Two years of posting, and then the mods decide to put an end for no good reason. Perhaps Cohen has got a finger on the trigger or is shagging one of the mods, who knows...(though I do think the problem lies with the spineless mods).
To put the cap on it, on the recent Bunting thread neo-liberal ideologue MoveAnyMountain has just posted the most voluminous amount of utter drivel I have ever seen on a message-board.
Who on earth could be bothered to pick all that apart and argue against it when you know he will just tip another load of drivel on the thread as soon as you have finished?
In my book the place is now an official waste of time.
Is there a decent board anywhere?
- questionnaire
Questionnaire: I just skimmed the thread you mention. It looks like MoveAnyMountain has excelled himself this time. Quite a while ago I tried to explain to him and other imbeciles why the use of the term Islamofascism demonstrates historical illiteracy. Needless to say, it was lost on him.
Good board on the web? Very hard to come by. The H-net boards are quite good and academically focused. I also like Neil Clark's blog (and a few others).
CiF used to be decent; it's now become unusable.
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