Our latest comments policy also failed to work. It required that Adam Horowitz and I approve every comment before it was posted. This is too large a responsibility (when we are both unpaid and howling under the lash).
Comments are vital to the life of this site. Most of our commenters are great. Many of them bring insights to issues that the writers can't bring. We need to keep the comment section alive, in spite of the vandals who have sought to destroy it by impersonating people and trotting out profanity and racism.
Our new strategy is to adjust the Intense Debate software so that it functions socially: all comments will be posted, but if an offensive comment is reported by several other readers, it will be automatically stricken.
We need your help here. Many readers turn to the comment section regularly to speak out or to learn from others. Can you help us by reporting foul comments? Thanks.
Our new strategy is to adjust the Intense Debate software so that it functions socially: all comments will be posted, but if an offensive comment is reported by several other readers, it will be automatically stricken.
You guys are doing a great job. Keep it up!!!! I had a letter published in our local paper the Colorado Springs Gazette and mentioned that people google your website. Thank You!
Thanks so much. We saw the letter online and loved it.
Looking into my crystal ball I perceive many hasbarites in high dudgeon repeatedly accusing the rest of us of being racists and worse — Reds!
Considering how much conflict there is between the critics of Israel and the hasbara boosters, I daresay just about any comment will be considered "offensive" by a few people. What I would suggest, if Intense Debate supports this, is that you nominate a few regular users who have shown evidence of emotional self-control and respect for dissenting views as after-the-fact moderators with the ability to cause individual comments to be hidden from view for your personal review. You can then delete or make the comments visible again at your own discretion. The idea here is to moderate, but after posts become visible rather than in advance, and to limit the moderation power to people who can be trusted not to use it merely to silence their opponents.
Watch out for collective action to abuse the system – either through proxy or group. The subject material that arises from this site clearly involves a group of people who already see themselves under siege and will collectively lash out (pre-emptively if needed) at comments that do not fit their narrative.
Keep it simpler. An IT guy/ette oughta be able to point out the masqueraders. Profanity doesn't bother me as much as the mind-numbing sophistries dispensed by eg yer wittys however 'civil' they boast themselves. For these there is no more effective armor than a sense of perspective and a willingness to see beyond one's own precious ethnicity.
Volunteer moderators are an excellent idea. Another good idea is for comments that attract several thumbs downs to fold so that they need to be unfolded manually to read them. I have already posted my viewpoint which is that Adams and Philip's time will be better spend on journalism and not on moderating.
Okie dokie. Hope it works.
Sounds like a good plan.
I agree. I think 'out-of-bounds' posts are pretty identifiable. The rules are not ambiguous.
This is not a good plan. Have you not heard of that megaphone thing? I see no reason why the trolls on the blog wouldn't exploit this and get rid of all the views they don't like.
I have posted several comments over the last month noting that Larry Franklin had not yet begun serving his prison sentence and wondering if the fix were in. My question has been answered. We have a two-tier justice system. Mr. Franklin was sentenced to 151 months in Federal prison after pleading guilty to two charges under the espionage act. He has not served, and will not serve, a day in prison. Sentence reduced for Pentagon analyst who leaked to AIPAC officials http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/aipac/franklin_facts.p... Here is his indictment. http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/aipac/franklin_facts.p... Here is the Statement of Facts for the case. READ it and judge for yourself whether this man's crimes do not warrant even a single day in prison. http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/aipac/franklin_facts.p...
For once, and likely only once, I agree with strahl. It becomes a popularity tool.
If possible, it would probably be better to have a trusted volunteer / volunteer(s) to monitor comments. I believe you have already outlined a comments policy, so they could just stick to that. Having a reporting system could mean that a particularly incisive comment which one side finds inconvenient is 'reported'.
you guys are doing a great job, but i also agree you need to focus on journal ism, not moderating the comments section… the idea of volunteers is a good one, but i don't have the time to offer and i wonder how many do… it might be better to let the posters hit the 'report' button before anything happens and have someone oversee that – an it person or a volunteer… overall i think this site does pretty good.. keep up the great work..
Corruption from Israeli creeping ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories has now unquestionably reached the Department of Justice, courtesy of the Lobby. American readers should contemplate the damage that a two-tier system of justice, the politicization of justice, can cause to the fabric of our society. Institutionalized impartiality of the courts, even if an unattainable goal always to be worked towards, is one of the underpinnings of any nation's health, and is one of the magnificent achievements of Western political tradition. This travesty of justice is emblematic of the kind of slow rot that brings great nations down. Above the law is outside the law. No good will come from this shortsighted foolishness.
A suggestion: Why don't set up your comments section where anyone who wants to comment must be privately registered with their email address. Then you can have a strict policy of banning any one's email address from the registration who is found to be threatening others, making extremely racist and vulgar comments towards others, or impersonating other people which would help set the tone of this blog. You can have a separate report offensive posts email address for posters to send complaints to concerning other posters that they found to be in violation of your stated rules, and make your own decision as to whether you think their complaints are valid. It would be like the posters monitoring themselves, where you two would only have to review the complaints coming into the email address, and than make a decision whether you think the person(s) complaints are valid and the poster who they complained about should be banned or not, or maybe just warned. And if you have their email address registered you can also send your decision to them privately.
Yes, absolutely. Basically I have always appreciated that Phil didn't interfere much in the comment section, in other words censure or limit the whole range of opinion we see. I also don't mind the so called Hasbara dynamics, although I have a slightly bad conscience about having used the a*word not long ago. I was fully aware of the rules. I also breached my own rules, if necessary ignore. Volunteers, I think is not such a good idea, since the problem remains, it is only shifted. It demands time. If at all there should be representatives from both camps, that is I would suggest Richard Witty for the pro-Israel side. I am aware many don't agree here. But would he have the time, would others have? The best solution would be technical. Restrict the report button to intensedebate users. Alert intensedebate to create an option, that allows to monitor reporting. IP's have been mentioned, I don't have a fixed IP, but I am assuming that my IP range from the flatrate provider could be recognized as within a range, if I then e.g. used different ID's to report, ideally it should show. True my IP does change, but who with my connection would really bother to log out than log in again to report only. It also should show that suddenly a nitwit from Cologne creates 10 different Intensedebate accounts obviously mainly for reporting. And that obviously this same person keep logging out to come in under a new ID to report again. My two pennies for misuse. This is a problem many must have. Also people that pass by, at least that is my impression usually don't care enough to report abuse. I guess I wouldn't bother. If they care enough to report there should be a message telling them they have to get an account to do so, including some message: We do not want this feature used too extensively for pure censure activities.
It would be a good idea to remove the Typepad.com comments facility. It slows down page loading (sometimes considerably), and you don't want people using it during the occasional outages of intensedebate.com, anyway — that has occurred.
Even now I'm still not sure what's permitted here, since the comments don't have an exact date and I don't know if that… that… thing was still able to rant about political Judaism after you announced moderation. Seriously though, just leave the place unmoderated. Sure it'd be great to see a handful disappear but that only blots out reality. They don't make the comments section unreadable. Even more annoying is that you have to unfold the trees. I think the last comments section was just fine. When a comment gets so many responses with intense debate you have to scroll down a huge thread to find the other responses. I prefer to just read the comments in the order they're posted.
But then the old comments will be gone (stop the browser loading while they're on the screen).
Wonderful news!!! Larry franklin will serve no jail time. http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200906120422
Many, many thanks for Colin for the follow up on the AIPAC trial and for his worthy commentary. Regarding the comments policy, this site (including it's most ancient incarnation on the Observer) has survived a mega-hoard of trolls without comment-control policy. In fact the only comment control ever employed on it was from the Observer itself when they fired Phil (of which they must be having a migthy regret by now). Well, I advise the younger generation of commenters to learn the noble art of mondoweissian troll evasion and stay on. To make comments on Mondoweiss is to be part of history unfolding.
I'll be on my best behavior, although the blood of a thousand murderous Jewish Bolsheviks is making a big tsimmes in my veins, already. But what can you do?
–"Can you help us by reporting foul comments?" YES WE CAN!
Many blogs have been closed down this way. Trolls sweeping through the blogosphere just to shut down these types of conversations. Keep it up Max , Phil and team. Can you visit a Palestinian camp. More perspective! Keep it up guys
hoo-rah, posting open to Anon. I suspect the voting system will keep you tethered to the admin console, as the blawg-us-fear links you now from a pro-palestinian, now from a pro-israeli site. But keep trying.
The big problem is not going to be foul and offensive trolls. The big problem will be what Mark Elf calls "time-wasters". These are Zionist supporters who present the same set of canards, over and over, no many how many times they are corrected. They also work a considerable amount of racism into their comments. Between the lies and the racism, a huge amount of time is wasted. If the "time-wasters" are not challenged, their version of the facts become the context of the discussion. A perfect example is the huge amount of time wasted on Witty's contention of journalistic bad faith and editorial corruption on behalf of the Palestinians by Phil Wiess. Witty's contentions ("a disciplining cadre") were insulting and ridiculous, but had to be refuted or at least challenged.
Stated in the name of opposing censorship no less.
This is the problem of political debate–it's irrational. Or to quit passing off Chomsky's comment as my own, "Debates are an utterly irrational institution, which shouldn't exist in a reasonable world. In a debate, the assumption is that each participant has a position, and must keep to this position whatever eventuates in the interchange. In a debate, it is an institutional impossibility (i.e., if it happened, it would no longer be a debate) for one person to say to the other: that's a good argument, I will have to change my views accordingly. But the latter option is the essence of any interchange among rational people." Almost all internet discussions take the form of this sort of debate. Imagine a Zionist confronted with the (obviously correct) conflicting narrative. Do they ever say, well, you're right, let me change my mind? No. For the more intellectually flexible, perhaps it will plant the proverbial seed of doubt. But for the zealots, they'll slink away, or be dishonest, or change the topic. Because their Zionism is a religion. So what are the moderators to do here? It's an impossible situation, the inevitable outcome of an irrational world. There's no good solution. At DailyKos they rate comments. I've had my comments erased there, defending my own points on my own posts, again and again. It got boring continually adding addenda to my original posts, so I left the site (it was blighting my mind anyway).
I would recommend that you state clearly what criteria you regard as offensive. (Its your site, you don't have to state why.) Ask people to flag offensive comments through the report button, then maybe daily review posts with more than two flags, but only against the criteria. I don't believe that you've censored that I've seen on the basis of political position. Sadly, others that aren't as generous as you, do censor on the basis of perspective.
Phil, is there some reason why we have to put up with crap like this from "Thors Provoni"? The Holocaust was not a moral justification for stealing Palestine. It was a response to Jewish financial criminality, Jewish white slaving, Jewish radical violence, Jewish sabotage, Jewish targeted assassinations (including the three defining political murders in Russian history), Jewish mass murder, Jewish ethnic cleansing and Jewish genocide That comment is found here: http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/hey... Unless, of course, you think he has the historical proof of this. Sure sounds like standard issue Linbergh or Ford to me.
Witty– I have no wish to spend my time engaging with you. But obliquely suggesting that Moose was advocating "censorship" won't fly. He spoke of "problems," and "time-wasters," not what to do with them. Now, are you arguing in bad faith? I think you are, and I think in person if you made the arguments you make here against someone arguing the opposite position (an irrational activity, to be sure) at the very least you'd look the fool in front of real human beings and not online avatars. More frankly, the internet is unnatural. It allows for unnatural forms of communication, and prevents community sanction, unfortunately. You're a symptom of that.
Where is the Typepad.com comments facility? I have not been able to find it.
It is as amoral to censor comments on a thought-provoking site such as this as it is to comment in a nasty, dirty, or racist fasion. Free speech is still a fundamental right here in the U.S., although it is rapidly changing elsewhere. If someone merely disagrees with someone it will be too easy for them to vote to block that comment. I am not defending nasty commenters, or racist people. Perhaps it would be better to use an automatic program that screens for racist/profane material, deletes the comment and blocks the IP address of the commenter.
I didn't know that the section could be set to delete automatically comments after a certain number of reports. I agree with Strahl that hasbaras who use their multifarious electronic systems could misuse this fact. Also, IMHO, this comments section has not yet attracted the real nutters – see how long you have to trek through Guradian or Haaretz comments to find anything reasonable or sensible. I still think that restricting entries to registrees would be effective, but I don't know if you can actually do this. I f this inhibits casual or new posters, then perhaps their views are not held sufficiently strongly anyway, to be worth seeing. FP (Foreign Policy – http://www.moonofalabama.org/ blogs (Walt, etc) do this, and also Moon of Alabama – http://www.moonofalabama.org/ – both seem to have very responsible comments sections. (This is a plug for two favourite websites) Both those websites have broader targets, so are not so subject to posters who let their emotions get ahead of their knowledge of facts.
Again told my comment was too long Here's the crap I put at the end: PS Obviously the first target for reporting is Richard Witty – then let's get Mooser ;-) PPS Guradian is not a typo – it has long been known as that by aficionados. PPPS I tried to avoid a split infinitive in the first line (to automatically delete) and doesn't the result look stupid?
JUST IGNORE THE MORONS, WE KNOW WHO THEY ARE. I stopped reading many posters after trying to understand their drift. Others are obvious mind fu*ckkers. If I want to get my knickers in a knot I can always read Charles Krauthammer. jim byers
And if it becomes obvious that some people do not support responsible free speech by constantly complaining about others because they do not agree with their opposing viewpoint, you can ban the incessant complainers…
It is merely the standard belief of many adherants of the phil and andy show. Why ban their beliefs? Afraid the baser elements of your movement will betray the way most of your feel?
The easiest approach would be to categorically ban all israelis from posting on the site. They are seething racists and it invariably comes out sooner or later
A good number of my posts have been censored over the last couple of days…Could I at least get an explanation as to why?
here are words to fill a page pages fill a book the choicest words the wisest sage count nothing if you don't look in between the lines and spaces here you'll find your goal half impertinence half eternal soul
Q – Please help us to monitor the comment section of this site? A – I'm game (and gamy)!
the best way I know id to keep two streams: One censored the other uncensored. Let people compare and contrast, at the end it is your reputation, so why to crucified yourself for a bunch of fouls? In addition it will be a good case analysis of Hasbara busters.
I think this is a good suggestion. I, too, am concerned that extreme people on either side will gang up on any viewpoint that opposes their own, and we will end up having some of the best comments automatically deleted. Does the software support this: If a comment is flagged as over the line by some predetermined number of people, it will be automatically hidden and/or submitted for moderation. That would, hopefully, limit the number of comments Phil and Adam have to deal with while placing some contraints on people who tend to cross the line consistently. Another possibility would be some combination of the two ideas. Phil and Adam could appoint reader moderators who would have access to flagged comments and make decisions about whether they should remain or go. That is, of course, if the software will support something like this.
Some of my posts never made it into the comments section in the last couple of days also. My guess is that they didn't have time to go through all of them, and then they decided to go back to letting everyone post without screening first, and they gave up on trying to get them all done. Just a guess, though.
This is a private space. Free speech does not apply here any more than it applies in someone's home.
You might ask Helena Cobban how she manages to keep her comment section on a relatively very high plane without a lot of heavy moderating.
Seems like a reasonable explanation…Has anyone else had the same experience?
But if the Typepad comments are removed, that would delete 3+ YEARS of Mondoweiss comments. And if you search google for Mondoweiss and some other Keyword you will see the search results are as much from the actual blog entry as they are from the comments section. The loss of older comments, many of which were very thoughtful and on-topic until recently, would be significant. P.S. you can still read old comments if you stop the browser before it loads ID (you just need to watch the side scroller thing, it will lengthen when it loads the Typepad comments and will contract dramatically once ID loads (this is how people are still able to post comments to Typepad)
Shirin, I doubt Helena gets as much traffic as this website does. While this website is booming across the internet, the popularity has its downfall as it becomes a target for those who disagree with the views here. Hence the flooding. I don't know if there really is going to be a solution. I guess Phil and Adam don't want to be associated with the bottom-feeders as they get accused of "supporting" this kind of behaviour if it is not moderated (see Dan Fleshler's log for the complaints about the readers and commenters of this site) which is quite preposterous. A few volunteers would be a good start, hopefully people who aren't quick to abuse power and are careful readers of comments (sarcasm and all). You need a few as this site has so much traffic that it will take a good chunk of time to do this. Or maybe the "rat-out" idea but judgment should be left to Phil and Adam alone if the comment is worthy to be erased. Anyones good luck and keep the blogposts coming.
Who knows? I've been here a long time now and I comment less and less, simply because it's the same thing over and over (MM, Leander, Rowan, Mooser, Shirin, American and others against Witty, Suzanne, Thom, Chris Berel, Joshua and the others who want to spin things to give Israel a free pass, but mostly Witty posting three times as many comments as anyone else.). Honestly, replying to Richard is a full-time job because he makes so many of them.
Jew Never read that particular quote of Chomsky. Really great and so on the mark….thanks! Well…sort of. Perhaps his comments do not exactly apply in the case of the I-P "debate" which really is NEITHER a discussion among informed, reasonable people nor a meeting of opposing camps with legitimate but irreconcilable differences who refuse to hear each other. The I-P "debate" has on one side, a group of willful, pathological liars who actually haven't ANY legitimate point to make whatsoever and on the other, those who accurately convey both the historical record of the conflict and the events now transpiring–the actual events, not the utterly phony ones concocted out of whole cloth by the israelis and their supporters.
Even as a Jew I find anti-Semitic rhetoric pretty much harmless. Unpleasant perhaps, but harmless, as Jews are an extraordinarily wealthy and politically connected minority. It is the anti-Arab hatred we ought to concern ourselves with as these are the people being slaughtered en masse and having their homes blown to pieces, as the world looks on and does nothing. In palestine, these crimes are being carried out by Jews, with enormous Jewish support from the states. Anti-semitism under such circumstances is more than understandable. You can't really call it racism–it's a response to reality, I'm afraid and it's Jews, not Arabs, who are ultimately responsible for changing this reality or else, reaping the predictable results. That's my two cents.
Witty has managed (albeit, inadvertently) to bring up issues sane people can discuss. While I find him a shoddily constructed imitation of a human being, I would never advocate banning him from the site. I totally empathize with Phil and Adam but at the same time feel that it is beyond obvious who ought to be banned, as their only contribution is to claim everyone here is an anti-Semite. Chris berl/jacob wolfhound/whatever his name of the hour is would be one person I would think everyone agrees has no place of any kind here. Why Adam and Phil allow he/she/it to post, (while often moderating or downright banning others) is a mystery. Anyway..they have a tough job, (and a great site) so hats off to them.
Joshua has a point. So my suggestion is, rather than fixating on who the idiot posters are, we should all try to read Phil or Adam's opening remarks for a given forum and address as much as possible the issues they have raised or the material they have presented. That would be the best way to keep the discussions semi-organized, on point, and (I suspect) freer of unproductive nonsense.
As harmless as the murder of Steven Johns?
These hypocrites were just recently complaining about censorship on Huffington Post. Meanwhile they're monitoring every post like the ADL monitors Youtube for every indecent thought. This is a revealing post by Weiss.
Looking through this website, I've noticed dozens of racist comments by "Strahl" and "Saleema" and "RowanBerkely" and "ThorsProvoni" as well as several others. It's clear that comments of an anti-Jewish nature are allowed, while those disputing Jewish conspiracy theories and racial hatred of Israelis are allowed.
So don't respond. I post in dialog with Phil largely. A large thesis of his content is how the press frames the issues that it frames. That is a reasonable thing to write about, for him and for me, including how Phil as a member of the press frames what he writes. Phil is a personal friend on the basis of a life-long inquiry into a moral life, which we engaged as typical teenager questions. I'm sorry for any judgemental tone that implies "I know better" and I hope that he similarly apologizes. Please don't suggest again that I not post. I've never intentionally insulted anyone. I certainly have attempted to shift the discussion away from what I perceive as negative generalizing content by what I perceive as a partially orchestrated mob. It IS part of the life-long moral discussion with Phil, that goodness expresses itself in both content/goal and in means, both.
Strahl would say that, because it would bar 90% of his racist comments. All of which can be found by clicking on his name.
"A shoddingly constructed imitation of a human being". You have balls, false ones. How do you justify such an idiotic statement about another human being, and in the name of thought or dissent?
Dear Phil, I apologize for any offensive language that I've used in the past while responding to the outright RACISM, HATRED, LIES and doublespeak of Strahl, Saleema, ThorsProvoni, RowanBerekely and other bigoted individuals. I assure you it will no longer happen (my language… not their bigotry, hatred and feelings of inadequacy). (BTW, my name is Craig, so I'm not "impersonating" anyone else)
Each Christmas the Jewish Anti-Defamation League website encourages Americans to snitch on their high school if they are singing "Silent Night". Weiss and his buddies are Jewish Marxists, they will all meet in Jerusalem in the end, in spite of all of their bitching, which is for American consumption (the rubes).
I post in dialog with Phil largely. This is a lovely example of Richard's narcissistic self-delusion.
Guradian is not a typo – it has long been known as that by aficionados. No, it hasn't. Private Eye for years referred to it as the Grauniad, owing to its then numerous typos.
My experts tell me that, when someone systematically mis-spells your name, it is so that, when third parties unknown run google searches on your name, theirs won't show up in the results. As often, I am completely baffled by this advice. I never google my own name, so I don't appreciate the tactics involved.
Look, it's not a self-delusion.That's exactly what he has been doing here all the time. That he keeps admonishing Phil is his signature, is in fact exactly what makes us angry. His default setting is critique, and this often leads to a purely emotional reaction. Only time will tell who is right and who is wrong in this context. The clash is between received wisdom and an experimental and not rigidly fixed position. I am clearly on Phil's side, but I don't find Richard's concerns completely irrational. And who knows considering the larger group dynamics he may in fact balance the list, questionable as his view of objectivity or balance may be.
yeah, like a toss. Perfect.
I agree, Mooser. And it gets me into an intellectual conflict. In university in the TV department there were two basic camps. One assuming that the crowd is stupid and must be fed accordingly. The other, my camp, opposed this by suggesting the opposite. But Joachim's larger discourse really shows the ends of that position. The myths are strong and that's the attraction he capitalizes on. Basically I would appreciate an inspired critique, but he has not the firm historical ground for that. He should stay out of history.
then let's get Mooser ;-) yes, good target. The moment he feels he is hunted he'll surely reach hilarious heights.
very bad idea. That would include people like Joseph Dana.
Obviously. I wouldn't take it personally. Let me confess my sins. I didn't realize what was going on, and I think I posted something three times or four in variations. At least I must, since something showed up after a while, which I thought I didn't get posted. Only then I saw the note that everything is monitored now. So, here is a black sheep that caused them additional trouble. If anybody had to read the same story again four times in variations, I can understand he decided to better give this up. I actually additionally forced him to choose the most clear version. ;)
at the end it is your reputation important point. Should I then decide to report from looking at it from the perspective of Phil & Adam's reputation? Turn into some kind of PR angle?
This is the JIDF argument, Jewish Internet Defense Force. It applies in someone's hone. Shirin. At least here in the USA.
Mooser, This was absolutely true: The Holocaust was not a moral justification for stealing Palestine
Hence also the narrow victory so recently at the US Supreme Ct holding that judges should not handle cases involving defendants who gave the judge lots of campaign finance money. Campaign finance by special interest lobbies has ruined the objectivity of all three branches of our government, making a bad joke of the words "we the people." The old saw "follow the money" posits a new Declaration Of Dependence. The USA is a democracy in name only; it is now a de facto plutocracy.
Yes, those commenting from a range of IPs is a problem; first it takes time to find the range, and then, the ban software ideally implements the ban of the range–between the real and the ideal software falls the shadow, a very frustrating shadow.
And Pollard will be pardoned! Yay!
That was immediately on my mind, concerning a comparison or benchmarkting as far as comment problems are concerned. I think the main conflict is that an open comment section develops almost automatically into a hybrid between forum and comment section. If you moderate the possibilities for quick exchanges are gone. The topic would deserve both a valuable to read comment threat and a forum. At the moment it's a hybrid.
Look if you compare our numbers, I obviously must post as much as Richard, if not far more. And basically, many people around me are trying hard to convince me to finally STOP IT. In the end that's what's wrong with the voting system, whoever writes much gets pushed up. The software should be more flexible to ignore multi-posters like me. And instead put more emphasis on the posts that get really high numbers of agreement instead of just honoring the chatty like me.
Look, Phil and Adam are responsible for this comment section. One of the best points above is that the atmosphere here somehow backfire on them. And considering the average amount of messages, they have no time to monitor it. I wondered that they even tried.
silly, how many Craigs exist in the world?
It's important to continue to harass this 65 year old New Yorker in a blue denim jacket called Philip Weiss and his companion, Adam Horror-witch. They need to be told constantly that they as New Yorkers have no grasp of what is happening in the world. And keeping the site 'Jewish' is a gross mistake and racist as well, because Judaism is a faith and you cannot by definition administer a site that deal with earthly, secular matters, and at the same time insist that it is 'Jewish' without being a rqacist bigot.
"Please don't suggest again that I not post. I've never intentionally insulted anyone. I certainly have attempted to shift the discussion away from what I perceive as negative generalizing content by what I perceive as a partially orchestrated mob."–Witty I would never suggest this as I like debating with Zionists. It is the only way to expose their lies, fabrications, illogical arguments, and negative generalizing content.. I have to admit that it is refreshing to see a Zionist at the receiving end of a "partially organized mob" at an online discussion, seeing as I have had similar experiences being a lone debater in forums with Zionist oriented mobs before…I used to debate back and forth with a Jewish Zionist lawyer from Chicago and he is really a smart guy by the way and very articulate, but unfortunately he couldn't argue effectively on behalf of his Zionist ideology because of the fact that the Zionist ideology is not defensible. You should see the kinds of names I was called and how I was labeled by him and others who were using Zionist arguments to defend Israel…Michael LeFlavour was another one of those Zionist minded individuals who I ran across and he was such a liar( I hope that he is reading this). Witty actually has it easy here… Richard do you have any idea how the Zionist propagandists(Hasbara) have been using negative generalizing content on a massive scale against their opponents, most especially those who are Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims? Why do you think you shouldn't be getting a taste of your own Zionist like medicine so that you can know what it feels like to be on the receving end?
There are supposed to be 8 replies to this post( I replied), yet only three have been showing up online here…
Witty, you always say IMO the first thing one must do is state corrective action as opposed to merely using downgrading rhetoric, especially rhetorical assumptions that demean the opposition ( or presentation of a (merely) abstract therefore useless objective POV?). We can all read Phil's posted comment policy. In keeping with your own urging on others, why don't you present us with your revised version of Phil's comment policy? What would you add or delete from Phil's presented acceptable comment criteria?
The problem faced here is a simple one. There are things in this world that one can not defend if he or she is to be considered a decent human being. To defend Israel, to pardon its actions, to obfuscates its horrifying crimes is to forfeit ones membership in the tribe of decent human beings. Defense of israel is indecent—there is no other word for it. Those on the site taking a pro-israel stance are not merely wrong. They are vile. This is the source of the trouble here.
I agree with Mooser. Thors' first point is right, but everything that follows is antisemitic drivel.
400 children were massacred, Witty. Phosphorus was dumped on their schools and playgrounds. Their limbs were torn off by "smart weapons" as their homes were destroyed. All this you support. All this you make excuse for while whining about the Israelis and their "land rights." Phil Weiss' rules of engagement for this site forbid me from saying what I think of you and your kind.
Mooser, Thors P supports his POV at his blog site. He usually also references his url in his comments here. By calling it crap does not in the slightest respond to the support he shows on his web site. Nobody who ridicules him on this blog ever does so by taking issue with the support for what he says extensively documented on his web site. I find this very telling although I don't always agree with the full sweep of his conclusions even after reading his support on his web site–BTW, apropos Lindbergh and Ford, how does the sweep of their conclusions differ from the sweep of Hasbara conclusions without bringing up the old saw Who's Ox Is Being Gored? All great lies are tainted by various nuggets of truth, or no?
Craig is right, Rowan. You're bigoted. Everyone knows that. You don't even recognize us Jews as God's chosen people, free to systematically abuse and dispossess whomever we want.
When people make silly accusations without quoting ONE piece of supporting evidence, they are usually dismissed as Zio-zombies, unworthy of further consideration.
once again, zero evidence. People who make outlandish accusations with nothing to back it up ought to be thrown off the site.
Still having comments dropped. not sure if it's a glitch or what.
who's he? it's one thing to say that anti-semitism still exists.It's quite another to assert that it is a serious enough issue to even bear mentioning in a discussion about what Arabs in the occupied territories are enduring, or even for that matter, what European arabs are facing in the way of racism and discrimination. Anti-semitism toward jews is a total non-issue. Worse than that, it's an obfuscation. Most of the outlandish claims by the ADL, Frontpage/David Horowiz etc (like the nonsense at Columbia) have been exposed as hoaxes.
In the united states in 2009, you've got a better shot at seeing an ivory billed woodpecker than witnessing an occasion of anti-semitism. It's just propaganda.
The comments attracted by Haaretz are really juvenile. Why is this?