All posts filed under: OffG

Comment issues – please read

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As most of you know we have an open comment policy on OffG. No one is ever pre-modded and no comments are censored unless they are content-free trolling, grossly abusive, overtly threatening or incitements to violence against individuals or groups. We’ve had upwards of 20,000 comments posted here since April 2015 when we launched. Probably less than fifty of these have had to be removed for above reasons. The decision to remove a comment is never taken lightly and it’s a vanishingly rare event here. So we are very troubled to be told that many of you are finding your comments failing to appear, or even disappearing after posting. Understandably you suspect you are being silently censored. We can assure you this is not true. We do not and never will remove comments because we don’t agree with the opinions expressed. So unless you are posting racist incitements to violence or long screeds of content-free personal abuse of another commenter you will not be censored here. If you comment goes missing and it doesn’t fall …

A two-year anniversary thank-you to all our supporters

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OffG is two years old this month! It’s been an interesting and eventful 24 months. We had no idea when we began that we would be reaching a readership of thousands on a daily basis. It’s been an immense privilege, but also, of course, quite a workload. It’s just the four of us here, and often in real terms that’s down to a staff of three, two, or even one, trying to provide content as well as manage the website. It can sometimes be daunting, but it’s also worthwhile. OffG’s only source of income is reader-support. We don’t run advertising (WordPress’s ads bring us no revenue), and we aren’t subsidised by any governments or institutions. So we are incredibly grateful to our loyal supporters for helping us to remain productive. Thanks to all of you this year we have been able to meet most of OffG’s running costs, domain registration, design expenses etc from your donations – which has helped us hugely. In 2017-18 – all being well – we are planning to move the …

invitation for submissions: “climate change”

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As our current feature points out, we are living in an age when free speech has come under overt threat. In the name of protecting a range of alleged special interest groups (women, ethnic minorities, gay people – even “the planet”), censorship is being re-packaged as a tool of social justice. “Hate speech is not free speech” is the slogan, devised, we can imagine, by some ad-agency under contract. The implicit assumption gaining ground is that some opinions, maybe even some facts, have no right to be heard. We think this is potentially one of the most dangerous developments of our time. We don’t have to agree with the “deniers” or the proponents of alternative therapies or minority opinions in order to recognise their innate right to be heard, or to recognise that if they are successfully silenced, we may be next. So, in order to do our own bit to redress the balance and resist the creeping censorship, we’re inviting submissions on one of the most polarised and overtly censored subjects in the modern …

Our favourite search term

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Obviously we get a lot of hits from search engines every day and some of them are fun to read. But today we got what is probably our favourite up to this point…. “complete and utter shit from the mainstream media…” We feel their pain. Let’s hope they found a little solace here.

You can now show OffGuardian your support…

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Many people have been expressing a wish to support our work here. We have been a little reluctant to jump on the funding bandwagon, because we didn’t see ourselves as anything but a small group of people giving themselves a forum for expressing their own thoughts. But we have to admit OffG has grown beyond that original remit and now has a readership and output that does require a lot of hours and dedication. In addition we are fast outgrowing our original WordPress home and are planning to move to our own webspace, which will bring with it increased costs of hosting and maintenance. We figure the time may be right to listen to our readers. So, if any of you would like to send us some pennies in support of what we are doing, you can visit our new “support us” page. Your assistance would be very much appreciated at this time and would certainly help us in keeping this project moving forward.

real skepticism versus pseudoskepticism: a cautionary tale

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by Catte The 9/11 series here has proved interesting in a number of ways. The scientific contributions have been thought-provoking, as has the BTL discussion, the level of which remains(with a few exceptions), consistently high. One thing it has made even more clear than it was before is the chasm between real skepticism and pseudoskepticism. Real skepticism is solidly sourced in analysis, probabilities and data. Pseudoskepticism is sourced in prejudice, a priori claims of certitude and arguments from authority. Real skepticism embraces debate, is concerned with ongoing research and avoids certitude. Pseudoskepticism has no interest in debate, eschews research, and wears certitude like a badge of office. Real skepticism has no need of ad hom. Pseudoskepticism uses ad hom as its one and only weapon. It’s easy to mistake one for the other, particularly in areas of specialty where we, as laypeople, have limited knowledge. If a scientist claims he has found thermite residue in the WTC dust, how easily do non-scientists evaluate that claim? And if websites emerge full of voices mocking the claim …

about OffG’s 9/11 section

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Due to the amount of support and attention our 9/11 fifteen years on  section on has been getting we’re going to keep it running until at least the end of this week. So, please keep sending us material to submissions@off-guardian.org, and try to mark them “9/11” if you can, for clarity.

why we’re covering 9/11 fifteen years on

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Fifteen years ago the idea of large scale false flags or government deceptions seemed absurd to all of us. But the unraveling of so many official narratives in recent years; the lies over WMDs, the lies over Ghouta, the lies over Libya and Ukraine, the repeat evidence for wholesale manipulation, if not fabrication, of events to promote war, means we don’t feel able to simply take the events of 9/11 on trust any more

“9/11 fifteen years on”: invitation for submissions

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OffG is hoping to field a series of articles in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, looking at the questions and controversies that still persist. We’re after a wide spectrum of perspectives and opinion from the mainstream to the so-called “conspiratorial”. Scientific papers, personal commentary and political analysis are all welcome. It can be your own personal work or recommendations of other material. Send to us at submissions@off-guardian.org before Sep 10 2016. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Now we are One…

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One year ago today five (as we then were) longtime Guardian readers who were being repeatedly censored in and banished from the ironically titled “Comment is Free” sections, got together to create an outlet where they could express themselves freely.