Dear friends,
I just got home from an important day trip when I found this comment which, unsurprisingly, was intercepted by the moderators:
For a (short) while I considered actually replying to our friend Joshua, but then I realized the futility of doing so. Joshua, who apparently has 269 comment approved never bothered to read the section “about the Saker” or the section I entitled “why I live in the USA“, so why bother? Besides, considering the “quality” of the accusations Joshua makes against me, the length and contents of either essays obviously far exceeds his attention span or cognitive abilities.
So all I will do is share this rhetorical pearl with the rest of you in the hope that it will give you a better understanding of the kind of ideological reality our entire community and myself have to operate under.
I hope that this is helpful.
Hugs and cheers to all,
The Saker
As painful as it might be, you should save that as evidence to use against “Joshua” uttering death threats.
It could be a daunting task, considering that “Joshua” could be hiding behind a VPN using a fake e-mail address, but still worth considering.
Well, that is why moderators are needed. Many times in many blogs comments are as interesting as the pieces themselves like in the case of this blog. Websites that leave comments run free end up vandalized by idiots or by competitors/opponents. My two cents. Hasta la vista
That reminds me of some of the comments on some of Saker’s articles from when the Blogspot was still running, such as this one from 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140815210746/http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/08/commentary-on-prosvirnins-russian.html. Makes me wonder if comments were moderated even back then.
Saker,
As you pointed out on the Russia video post, Joshua was irredeemable. I challenged him lightly (trying not to be too hard, as you know I can readily do).
But from the start of his “work” here at the Vineyard, his comments always carried a stink to them. Mental illness or paid troll, I didn’t much care which. I let it ride.
But the truth always surfaces.
Enough rope and hung himself.
Almost all of “them” turn out to be haters, don’t they?
Thank you for showing us the type of ‘sick nutters’ that you and the moderators deal with on a daily basis.
I hope you and your family have strategies to protect yourself against these vile attacks.
Stay strong. Cheers from downunder.
I was SMH when I saw an @aol.com address. that’s where America’s best rise from.
also run ‘whois 166.182.80.18’ or ‘nslookup 166.182.80.18’ on any mac/linux computer from command line to learn more.
Is the same Joshua who has been posting fairly often recently (or I just noticed him on threads I happened to be reading)?
He seemed pretty anodyne.
So then he suddenly pops up like this?
Or this is a different Joshua?
No matter, perhaps, except that I had noticed the name cropping up recently.
Anyhow, very sorry that you have to be subjected to such threats.
With the state of the world today, it is criminally easy to criminalize anyone who raises and discusses complicated issues that Someone wishes to oversimplify and then quash.
Katherine
It’s funny, joshua spent a lot of time working to build up a credible reputation on this site, only to blow it sky high with that childish email to saker. Whatever his/her motivations for commenting here, that was a lot of work for nothing. :-D
Theoretically an enemy of nice Joshua might post nonsense and sign it “Joshua” just to discredit nice Joshua, or “vot tak” to embarrass you. Is there any mechanism to avoid this?
bp
It never ceases to amaze me with the number of fools whose only desire is to shoot the messenger rather than discuss life as we have it today. Must be lonely living in his mother’s basement with nothing but a computer as company, hoping against hope that kankles will get the nod to run against Trump.
Auslander
Long time reader. Please do not let these sort of comments get to you. I would say there are very many who turn to your site every day for our sanity and hope trying to find the reality of this crazy world. God bless the work you do Saker.
So people who post their opinions on a news site should register as foreign agents, but AIPAC, who is actively lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, is not registered..?
I do not remember offhand how many soldiers and others the US government pays and equips to troll online. This is public information.
It is quite plausible that some of them would use language and threats such as “Joshua” did. The chance that he would deter you or prevent you from continuing with your work is obviously low.
But they probably take the long view: “The thousand-mile journey starts with a single step”. Enough of them relentlessly hammering away might hope to wear down the voices of truth and decency in the long run.
Well said Tom. Unfortunately, the troll armies are infiltrating every alt, “truth telling site”. And it’s not just those bright bulbs wearing army green.
Thankfully, the moderation at the vineyard is first rate. Both wings of the “intelligence” apparatus are going full bore. The Neo-Lib propaganda is the most mundane. Then you have neocon, Bannon intel bots ruining every comment section from Zero hedge to Jimmy Dore YouTube comments. It’s amazing to watch how easy it is to hijack the message and install their talking points. And so the masses will go the way of the Do-Do. Nature has a way of dealing with stupid.
I have, on occasion, suspected that some people who post here are disinformation agents.
But there is simply no way of knowing for sure.
Many times in my life, I have argued politics with people I know. I knew that these people were not “disinformation agents.” Some of them were just people who believe patriotism mandates a refusal to criticize government. Others were people who simply trust the Corporate media – and I, myself, used to trust the trust the Corporate media. Others were people who never took the time to investigate political issues but possessed beliefs for emotional reason and not grounded in fact. So, due to that experience, I have no way of knowing if the people on this site I have suspected are disinformation agents, or fall into one or more of those other categories. There is simply no way to tell.
I do believe that there are disinformation agents out there. And that is really frustrating. It is hard enough to understand the world when people genuinely honest. But when people deliberately try to muddy the waters, it makes everything so much more difficult.
Everyone has to be on guard for both disinformation agents and also people who unintentionally spread false “facts” and false analyses. Either way, you have to use the brains God gave you and which hopefully you have cultivated all your life. Also, once in a great while, people who have always been trustworthy in the past can stop being good, usually because they are threatened or blackmailed.
More common than a U-turn into evilness, is that a “formerly good person” is just someone you outgrew and finally saw through their brand image. (Robert Fisk is an example for me.)
Having said that, paranoia is healthy in small doses, but not healthy in too-large doses. The healthy part of paranoia is when it encourages you to get to the rock-hard bottom of your analyses (such as with eyewitness testimony or perfecting your logic, seeking assistance from people whom you know and can trust, and pursuing your ideas to the very end for a final true/false conclusion.) What you want to avoid, if possible, is leaving serious loose ends that make you doubt and not take any action.
I used to have my own web site. It was sports oriented. Even with a sports site, I had to deal with people trying to manipulate opinion, personally harass me and so on.
Believe it or not that is true. It was a real problem. I would have people send “comments” to newspapers supposedly authored by myself. In other cases people would “sign me up” for spam mails, people would post harassing (even threatening) messages on my bulletin board and so on.
And this was a website about sports, for God’s sake!
It was a real problem.
Now, I can just imagine what it must be like to deal with site addressing controversial political issues. My sympathies go out to the Saker and the moderators.
And that is only the half of it.
Karl Rove is reported to have said:
Those statements were so bizarre that I always wondered what he meant. Now, I have come to the conclusion that he meant – at least in part – that information warfare and manipulation of opinions has become a major field of warfare in the 21st century.
This seems to be true and it makes it very hard for an average person to determine exactly what is going on in the world. That is one of the reasons that I love to travel. The more I see the world with my own eyes, talk to people in other nations, the more I realize the world exhibited to me by the Corporate media is a fiction. And finding out what is really going on is a very, very difficult task.
I come to this site since it offers me information and reasoned logic that broadens my understanding of the world. I don’t agree with everything here but there is certainly real value presented. When I get that “oh, that’s why …” feeling, it helps me to knit together a more complete understanding of what is happening in the world.
I commend that position!
Cheers,
-R
Great comment, Mike. US officials spend their time creating lies and false narratives, which is why I don’t read what they have to say. I stopped listening to politicians decades ago. It’s their job to refuse accountability to anyone, to confuse the public, to create chaos, so that the banking families can continue their global looting operation. I’m always amazed that most people I know seem to believe their lies, and they endorse the various mass murder campaigns undertaken by US terror forces (the US military). With a sleeping, brain-washed populace, these US terrorists are literally getting away with mass murder. And the banking families continue to accumulate the world’s wealth.
We live in extremely frustrating times, which serve to exacerbate feelings of hostility and confrontation. Because we feel powerless, or hopeless we sometimes react aggressively (fight) as opposed to withdrawing completely (flight).
Joshua’s hostility is merely an outlet for those same frustrations and anxieties that create the extreme political and social divides which we see almost daily, including the polarization of extreme positions with regard to the current health pandemic.
People like Joshua need to believe that their government at least “has their back”. But they are bombarded with conspiracy theories (which make or may not be at least partly true, btw) which cause them to feel betrayed by authority. The fact that our government’s around the world are not altruistic servants of the people, and are instead self interested and rewarded for serving the interests of the banking class rather than the working class is hard enough.
The little people of the “Indispensable” nation now have to contend with the idea that socialism is in fact a legitimate purpose of an elected government. Fixing crumbling bridges is socialism, defending the rights of citizens against bad actor (domestic or foreign) is socialism, Medicare is socialism and “Social Security” is socialism. And yet they have been brainwashed into believing that socialism is anti-American and perhaps even Satanic.
They then have to reconcile these new realities with these new betrayals. It is times like these that many people find solace in the dogma of religion and the belief that a just and powerful God will replace the figures of civic virtue that government was supposed to espouse, such that a place of peace and justice, goodwill and prosperity awaits with eternal gifts to repair the horrors of the human condition, temporal and fleeting as they are.
Joshua’s come in many flavors, shapes, colors and sizes. We all have to deal with them as we wade through the murky waters of depravity to somehow separate the lies from the truth, and deal with reality.
This we learn from the flower of understanding …
God be with and protect you Saker.
Thank you so much for the reality truth you provide up!
I am not sure that this comment will be regarded as relevant to “joshua’s” complaint. But it triggered this issue that I have thought about a lot. Excellent references are the books by Fritz Springmeier on the level of sophistication of the mind control used against all of us. I expect many Saker readers will have a lot of insight into this matter.
Having spent a career in software development, I could readily understand the concepts involved in programming a victim’s mind. I well know the difference between the simple designs of amateurs versus the extreme complexity of real industrial processes with man-centuries of development. What Springmeier opened my eyes to are the mine fields placed in mind control victims’ minds. These people are programmed to attack themselves if they start to recover from their programming, and to attack others who threaten to break up the control structure in any, even small, manner.
This can help explain the violent and irrational reactions seen when victims are presented with even very mild statements of the “other side” of a contentious issue.
There is much more that can be said about these things, but maybe you can see how “joshua’s” comment brought these considerations to mind.
Saker … don’t waste your time or energy on comments like these … just delete them right away.
Dear Saker,
This post that you presented us is interesting.
First of all, it’s personal and contains some kind of threat so simply delete it.
Second, I don’t care whether it comes from a frustrated bloke in the basement at his parents house or from a regular type that just had an argument with his boss or spouse, or simply having a bad hair day. And there are also people who have some kind of bipolarity, and sometimes sink in depression for days or even weeks.
You just have to read a comment thread on ZH on a juicy subject to see what happens to a site when there is practically no moderation, and I even don’t count the Hasbara trolls.
Just delete such posts, and when there appears a pattern, well, I’d advise to start with a temporary ban, and when that doesn’t work a goodbye might be suitable. But I guess you people already do that.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers, Rob
Triggered! Looks like NPC Joshua got Triggered.
It is apparent that the comment was written by a mentally unstable, rationally challenged npc with limited communication skill. The commenter has an immature emotional tantrum to exposure to facts, truths,opinions, or anything that might trigger cognitive dissonance to Joshua’s MSM programmed belief system. Joshua’s outburst displays a vitriolic hatred for the concepts espoused by America’s founding fathers. Comment could be written by a Hillary Clinton fan or maybe John Bolton. Responding to such irrational childish outbursts is like responding to a two-year old during a tantrum. Just ignore them and delete the immature comment.
Joshua is a classic example of a person who is owned by an ideology that is sorely lacking in facts.
His rhetoric tells us everything about him. He is
poorly informed
poorly traveled
poorly educated
As a result, we see in him a lack of critical thinking skills, an inability to either compare/contrasts ideas or even to construct an adult-thinking paragraph.
What we “got” here is someone who is imprisoned in his ideologies and unable to cope with both “it” and the world around him.
Sad…….God gave us a brain to nurture and discipline our mind.
Don’t know the hapless chap!
But I hope he has a sense of humor:
Joshua At The Bailout Yelled “Geronimo”
Joshua at the bailout yelled, “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo!”
Joshua at the bailout yelled, “Geronimo!
But the ‘chute…. didn’t open up!
Splat.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bail–out the first definition is 1.To parachute out of an airplane
Further documentation: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/where-the-tradition-of-yelling-geronimo-when-jumping-out-of-a-plane-came-from/
Ft Benning, Georgia Airborne Forces Training Center.
Well I agree, you do put up with a lot if this is a typical example. Smart move to place your IT system in Iceland.
However, to some extent your approach does create an illusion of sanitized nanny-blog neutrality. That is not a criticism and aids readability etc. But it does deprive the interested critical reader (and perhaps commentor) of the real-world environment ‘out there’. I can’t see and easy solution unless instead of blocking you simply divert to a cesspit dump thread (at the cost of disk space I assume). Then they are exposed to the public light but off stream and off the record. It would not save much effort as some form of moderation decision would still be required. However, it could be a useful resource for some who wish to see and review the full spectrum of uncensored ‘information’ etc. Why? Witness theory, basically. I subscribe to the notion that the more humanly aware eyes and ears that see and hear (witness) the operational antics of the roaches then the more the light provides a feedback loop to higher realms and thus higher probability of mitigation etc.
In any case I recently stumbled on the following Part 1 and part 2 of a 2017 interview with Doug Valentine who gained access to top officials in the CIA revealed their secrets and explained the inner workings of the CIA. He would be an interesting interview imo.
“The CIA As Organized Crime”
https://youtu.be/cP15Ehx1yvI
“The CIA As Organized Crime – Part 2”
https://youtu.be/IYvvEn_N1sE
excellent article and comments. We still have a few years hopefully, to use internet as our modern samizdat. The links to talks by Mr Valentine (by Anonymous) are very interesting.
Sir, If you are what Joshua describes, I feel allowed to tell you my true identity. I am Father Chrismas, Kal El, Jor El, The Grinch and Kermit the Frog.
We are planning in my personification to conquer the world and we will install the worship of the giant yellow sausage.
You and your moderators have my sympathy on that one. We may disagree on several points. I even can hate some of your decisions. But it’s life. I prefer to be on your side when you meet such a crap.
You need to be vigilant he has not used his Ram’s horn yet.
Simple solution: Delete him.
Good thing you did not reply. He is a genuine bully – a ranter who has lost am understanding of the website he never had in the 1st place…. -_-