…and now they are censoring any links to our website
A reader posted a link on the Guardian to our latest kindly critique of it’s curious ideas of what constitutes breaking news in Ukraine (we are puzzled why they think cheese is bigger news than a Right Sector rally in Kiev).
Here’s a screen cap of the link she posted:
And here’s a screen cap of what remained a scant ten minutes later:
And if that wasn’t enough apparently she has had her account placed on pre-moderation.
it’s not hard to see why the Graun decided to re-name their “Comment is Free” section is it? Some residual sense of honour presumably.
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Rushbridger/Viner: “Facts are amenable but comments may be disappeared.”
The guardian is part and parcel of the failing fourth estate. Remember they were for the bombing and occupying of Iraq weapons of mass deception that is all the Guardian is good for trying to manipulate liberal readers to the neo-liberal corporate narritive. The New Editor and chief is from Haretz isreale liberal rag. Hence you will c nothing written against Isreal.
Really? An Israeli Editor? This explains much.
So the ‘New Editor is NOT Israeli’..Moving forward, do you still see yourself as confused?
Fortunately, your comment is not factual, which would be a real travesty. The new editor of the Guardian is a lady by the name of Katherine Viner. She has never been employed by any Israeli Newspaper.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/20/guardian-appoints-katharine-viner-new-editor-in-chief
The Guardian is going to be on the wrong side of History once the truth eventually comes out.
The CBC tried to do the same thing but looking at the comments from this latest article http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-inquiry-closes-in-on-cause-suspects-1.3153072 . Almost nobody is buying the bull they are being fed.
Here is the top comment:
“”reluctance to put further pressure on Russia at this point, given the already tense situation between the Kremlin and the West” This is a totally false statement and their has been zero reluctance. Blame has been placed squarely on Russia with great gusto from day one.
Russia has been guilty until proven innocent in the press since day 1 with no conclusive evidence for one side or the other that I have seen.
Russian is frozen out of the investigation. Ukraine as a likely party to the disaster fully involved including a veto on anything that might incriminate them. Not an impartial investigation,more like a international lynching.
Whoever did it it seems quite possible to me that the west and the Ukrainian right wing nazi wacks were at least as capable as the Russian Ukrainian counter revolutionaries, and the west and the Ukrainian nazi wacks totally capable of a false flag for the purpose of demonizing Russia and furthering support for their coup and further aggression.
The montrous lies we are told continuosly in our FREE PRESS are very evident to anyone with eyes and no thinking person beleives anything in our bought and paid for propaganda we call main stream media. (unfortunately including our national broadcaster CBC)”
Most of the other top comments are similar, take heart off-guardian, the trolls can be defeated.
[…] This article originally appeared at Off Guardian […]
the groan has discarded any pretense of free speech,
i posted eight posts in a thread only one survived the groans moderator,
in order not to leave behind an ugly trial they simply disappeared all without even
a comment deleted…. msg !
Time for a #Guardiancensorsagain?
This is serious censorship to defend the failed ukraine project.
The comments they allow to be printed amount to a lot of insults about Putin Snd Russia.
I can recall how in the beginning of the ukraine crisis real informative comments and videos from on the ground were posted. Now it’s just a comment section that they only open rarely now and when they do it is full of insults and no information.
My comments used to be among those informative comments to which you allude. They frequently pushed the limits on the 5000 word boundary and always included lots of links to alternative sources of information, which countered the lying bullshit of Shaun Walker and some of the other anti-Putin propagandists. After not posting for several weeks while out of the country, I made several short posts to Walker’s screed about Andrei Babitsky upon my return. All of these were deleted and the next time I tried to post a comment to an unrelated subject, I received the message that I had been banned. So much for “comment is free”.
I suspect that this is all part of the changes brought on by a new Editor in Chief coming on board there. I don’t know much about the guy, but the etiquette police changed almost over night. As you noted, it was not for the good, since the threads are now just full of sophomoric insults and numerous deletions.
This is sad. Over the past two years, I had contributed more than 1500 pages of comments on various subjects. My comments on the Ukraine were frequently among the most “recommended” and I had made the Guardian both my primary source for information and my favorite site for comments. Now, due to a few sarcastic comments about a hack journalist, I’m banned for life.
The brief achievements of the glory days of Snowden and Greenwald will not be repeated. The Guardian is now firmly under the control of the professional propagandists.
Is your account deleted or can you still access the old comments? If you can, and you’re happy sharing, it might be informative for readers to see a few examples of the kind of input they no longer welcome at Graun Central.
My archive is still there. Here’s a link.
https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/10505956
Much of what was written about the Ukraine was deleted during the last two days, but any short review of my archive will yield plenty of comments about the Ukraine. I have also downloaded my archive to a word file and may resurrect and update some of my these for future publication.
Finally, I have been thinking about submitting the off-guardian “form” to become a writer at this site, but have not gotten around to it as of yet. My idea is that I would like to continue to comment on certain Guardian Articles as if I was still commenting on their site–without the censorship. I would like to do the same thing with Salon, which is another site in which critical or adversarial comments are not welcome.
Anyway, I admire your work here and am glad that you and others have taken the time to set up this site. Please keep up the good work!
Get in touch with us!
No need to worry Mr Benson.
Between yourself, BunglyPete, StandupWoman and myself we shared the truth (evidence and links) with a lot of people who obviously (judging from responses and recommends) appreciated it more than we ever thought.
And so the Guardian noticed and decided to try to ban all of us.
That speaks volumes.
Still got that bowl of weed, Sir ?
😉
Of course, I have that bowl and it’s always full of good stuff. Geez, somebody remembered me! I’m flattered.
Is that what happened to BunglyPete and StandupWoman? Sad. I’m not going to ask to be reinstated. The last two times they put me on pre-edit, which lasted for a day or two before they realized the error of their ways and reinstated me. This time, because of a one line sarcastic remark, I think that the illustrious Mr. Walker personally had me removed for life. Fuck him.
I hope that more people find their way over here. The Guardian is killing their threads with this new censorship and although I can’t post there anymore, I certainly post a link to off-guardian wherever I post these days.
Ah – BunglyPete! I was a huge fan of his I hope he finds his way here. And remember Hermius. Another marvellously well-informed commenter who was serially banned.