Dear friends,
I am really sorry to have to announce that I fed up with the torrent of ignorant, stupid and racist comments this blog is getting. I honestly tried to do my best not to have to censor these guys, but that only seemed to have exited them further. I simply don’t have enough time to spend one single more minute dealing with this issue. I am not a Kindergarten teacher and I am not a psychiatrist.
So, from now on, any and all Nazi and Jew-hating trolls are banned and their comments will be immediately erased with no warning. Fact based and intelligent discussions about Zionism, Judaism, Jews, Hitler, WWII and any other topics will be allowed (and encouraged!), but only if they are on topic with the original post.
Frankly, I see what I will be doing not as censoring thought or speech, but at kicking out stupid and ignorant trolls who contribute nothing and who just pollute this blog by their presence. Again, adult and intelligent posts will never be censored.
I am very sorry to have to do that, but I have come to the conclusion that this has become necessary. I want this blog to return to its usual level of intelligence and civility.
Many thanks for your understanding and my apologies for having to resort to such methods.
The Saker
To ban some people is a necessity.
The great example of completely uncensored speech was the USENET, it has survived a lot of time, but then came the spam, and this was, essentially, the end.
So, don’t worry too much, some moderation is reasonable and useful.
It is, in fact, no that difficult to distinguish censorship of certain ideas from moderation. And a reasonably moderated discussion is much more interesting reading.
Dear Saker,
Don´t be hard on yourself, anywhere in the internet where substantive information and discussions are to be had, this crapping in the punchbowl happens, it is all pervasive and there is no escaping it. You can be sure that some of these “trolls” are just bored people with sociopathic traits who quite simply get off by pissing people off. They do not believe what they say, but say purposely inflammatory and idiotic things for that purpose. There are also paid saboteurs who are actually employed by intelligence agencies, have hundreds of handles on different discussion forums and who’s “job” is to do this kind of crap.
They are even creating the ability (or already have) to have automated nazi-troll-bots LOL
From The Guardian
“The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.”
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
All those thousands of operatives doing that exact same thing are getting little expensive i guess.
There is also the person who bought into stupid information really believes it and has a mission to spread it, but these are in a minority. In the end it doesn´t really matter the motivations of the trolls.
It is a sad fact of life these days: you cannot run intelligent online discussions, especially in so called “cutting edge” areas, if you do not weed out the crap. This is time consuming and a waste of time, which is part of the idea. I am not aware if blogspot has good tools for comment moderation, like forum software has (IP blocking for instance).
Greetings from Singapore:
At least since Snowden disclosures, we know that ‘intelligence’ services place trolls to disrupt/divert/confuse/discredit blogs/forums/chats in the internet. You are right to ‘flush’ them out, including the ones which are mumbling nonsense by their own accord.
..and since we are approaching this very important Sunday..let me be a bit emotional : Glory to Russia!.
It would be fair to assume this site is now the target of organised US covert attention.
Comments to distract from the topic are a standrad technique for military and government contracted trolls.
Social media manipulation is now well-established, see here for example:
http://consciouslifenews.com/revealed-spy-operation-manipulates-social-media/1147440/
The strategy is to distract the moderator/blogger from the task at hand.
Don’t be distracted Saker, the message is too important.
No apology necessary Saker.
I’m here to learn from your analyses, and I learn also from some of your insightful commenters.
The children pushing their own barrows added nothing to your blog.
Regards,
Michael
By the looks of it, there is a single obstinate, but rather prolific guy who has a compulsion to relate everything and anything, and nothing, to “the Jew”. Censoring the comments by that guy will be a cost effective way to keep your comment section from degrading.
This is your blog, this is your exercising your freedom of speech. That (true or fake) Jew-hater is free to create his own blog and see if he can attract readers… Right now, he is just free-riding on your astonishing accomplishments. He’s free to try it, but you are free to block it. I mean an important part of the value of your blog is the comment section – well, it was, until the guy came, and will again be, since you throw him out, without the bathwater.
Honk
Saker:
Well done.
They were not contributing but the opposite.
Did the right thing.
Your blog is getting a lot of attention, hence the nonsense.
Удачи!
My dear friend,
Please resist! I also kept a blog like the yours in the past and please believe: I do know exactally what are you passing!
These bastards, some of them paid and others just irreversibly sick, are trying to increase the logistic costs that you to deal to maintain the blog up. They are also trying to drive you just crazy and angry. Probably the enough to publish something can make google close your account.
Do not fall in this trap man! Listen to this advise from a Brazilian musical friend ;).
With the time, you will feel yourself tired of filter the good and well intentioned comments from the sea of shit these bastards send every day… and you will be tempted to just block out the comments space…
I don’t know how you are going to face it, but have other person to share the load can help.
I am thinking in some semi-automatic mechanism to manage the filtering… i i will make you know as soon i have some idea.
Cheers,
Moderation is perfectly acceptable.
..and since we are approaching this very important Sunday..let me be a bit …
… historical:
95 years ago another people carried out a Referendum. On May 11, 1919 an incredible 82% of the Vorarlberg population decided to become part of Switzerland. On the Swiss side it was Federal Councillor (Bundesrat) Felix-Louis Calonder from Graubünden who was one of the top supporters of the annexation. Not everyone was happy though. In particular the non-German-speaking parts of Switzerland raised concerns, fearing the German-speaking part might become too large when Vorarlberg joined. Anyway, the plan was destroyed when the territorial integrity of Austria was included in the peace treaty of St. Germain.
if you’d like assistance banning ip addresses, let me know. i’ve been helping Penny with this on her blogspot blog and it seems to have helped quite a bit.
-njt
What anon @ 19:51 said.
I don’t know who the repetitious bot is but I hope he hasn’t succeeded in causing you to block relevant matters, i.e. a little counter to the “nazis are in charge” stuff – since we should know that’s not the case.
He was so blatant about it, it shouldn’t take much effort to delete nonsense like that.
As late as yesterday I still didn’t believe this thing could develop into a hot big powers war. It’s almost as if they want to get this going because of the 100 year thing.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-14/russians-have-already-quietly-pulled-their-money-west
More info on what China is doing and thinking would tell us a lot. I know they were initially behind Putin, in a mild way. ??
> banning ip addresses
banning ip addresses is both too broad and too narrow.
too broad, because that racist may end up on the same tor exit node than I am – and then what? then you are censoring me. And I hope there’ll be no general ban of tor users, although blogger.com might actually take that decision unilaterally.
too narrow, because that guy, if he uses tor, can just hop unto another ip address with the click of a button.
My plea: Don’t ban tor users.
Honk
I was one of the suckers that drank the KoolAid about the Zero Hedge story, taken from Bloomberg, which misquoted a PBS Network News interview with Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dempsey. I was damned angry at Zero Hedge. I went to his site and went straight to his comments section on the article. There were literally hundreds of idiotic posts listed. Thus, most readers would not get to my correction post at the end of this long chain of nonsense. I’m reading and commenting w/links here because I take this site as an open forum for the exchange of real, fact-based ideas and news. This is something rare and precious. So what am I driving at? If you want this site to keep its integrity, you MUST keep these fake, toll-induced post out.
Over at http://www.checktheevidence.com, Andrew noted that he considered the possibility that there may be a computer program that immediately generates responses to any “threatening” posting, because these responses are almost instantaneous–faster than someone could stop, ponder, and write. Remember, that technology has advanced light-years since DOS computer began. In fact, many of us get our best information from the comments sections, so if you do not filter these fake postings and it gets too difficult to monitor the real information, I know that I will search for a different source, or just stop reading this site. Finally, imagine having to read 400 – 500 postings on some story or posting. No one is going to read all of those. At
Zero Hedge, some of his articles do have over 400 comments. Who is going to read those? No one. Article/facts or evidence neutralized.
@Honk:banning ip addresses is both too broad and too narrow (…) My plea: Don’t ban tor users.
No worries, the only thing I will ban is moronic posts. No technological bans, no bans of names – only moronic posts with be sent to the trash.
Cheers,
The Saker
Good work. They don’t deserve a platform and they undermine the quality of the work you’re doing.
You do well, Saker.
As a few comments have pinpointed, trolling pollution is a distraction from the main issues at stake, in addition to being unpleasant filth.
It was coming to the point where I was discouraged from accessing the comments: too much nazi or proto-nazi junk. So again, yes sieve, it’s your blog and it’s interesting reading it because you’re an original mind.
That being said… being anti-nazi does not make one prozionist… On the contrary!
So please don’t allow zionists either to pollute your blog… They have powerful means, and they are already controlling the mass-media, so we do need an independent and more objective place like yours.
Sinal que você está fazendo algumas pulgas pularem.
Não esquente a cabeça com esses carrapatos, não vale a pena.
Uma sugestão que dou:
Não deixe postar como “anônimo” assim, você pega o IP do infeliz.
Poderá não saber diretamente o endereço mas, cidade e país, com certeza!
Recomendações do Brasil!
Tudo de bom para você e sua família.
Alexandre.
Thank you for quality control at The Vineyard of the Saker. For it is tiring to have noise always fighting with correspondence. good work.
Dear Saker,
I really need information and new thoughts: no reason to worry nor to become sad, you’ve extensively proven to be wise, smart and fair.
I do understand and endorse your necessary choice.
Wishes and Regards
M.
Hi everyone,
I´ve noticed that in the past week or few days, all US mainstream media have dropped Crimea as their cover story and now relentlessly cover the missing Malaysian jet. This might be a good sign, the ebb and flow of MSM is a good indicator of whats is intended for the public to have in their mind at the time. I wonder why attention is being taken away from Crimea and Russia, even a day before the referendum,
Hi The Saker,
I think you are right.
Clothcap had a great blog in a main stream UK newspaper which was evetually closed down by the trolls. I think they have the view if they put enough negative comments on your blog – they can compalin to the powers that be and get it shut down completely. So, even if it is time consuming, I would go through the last few days comments – when it suddenly increased and delete them all.
It also spoils the conversation.
Rgds,
Veritas
p.s. The IP thing isn’t good becauase even genuine commenters get deleted :(.
Yep, works for me and I have noticed other sites having the same problem lately.
Zero Hedge at one time had a great comment section it has since been taken over by the crazy people with nothing important to add to conversation. To bad.
Now back to regular programming, please;)
@jo6pack:Now back to regular programming, please;)
You got it! :-)
Have a wonderful day and week-end, cheers!
The Saker
A modest proposal, Saker: Software could easily change the term “jew” to “zionist”, and “nazi” to “fascist” before a comment is posted, which would eliminate most of the bad stuff, and later could be tweeked for various spellings (e.g., “jewish”). Maybe your donation could help pay for it. I’m some years away from it, but it should not be difficult.
@Gabriel:That being said… being anti-nazi does not make one prozionist… On the contrary! So please don’t allow zionists either to pollute your blog… They have powerful means, and they are already controlling the mass-media, so we do need an independent and more objective place like yours.
No worries here. In the past, I have been accusing of, you guessed it, anti-Semitism, because of my (admittedly) very anti-Zionist and anti-Phariseic (what is usually called modern “Judaism” – which it ain’t, of course) views.
So, believe me, you can fully count on categorical rejection of both anti-Jewish racists AND of Jewish racists (whether they are followers of Hertzl or Maimonides, or both). The truth is, these folks are very much alike, imnsho.
Cheers, thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
@Ivanov
> Software could easily change the term “jew” to “zionist”, and “nazi” to “fascist”
You must be kidding. Why should a program change the meaning of posts? Even though they are related:
jew != zionist
nazi != fascist
Honk
one can start a blog about the weather and someone will use it to discuss Nazis and Jews. odd, but there Jews in all walks of life, just as there are Methodists and gasp! Presbyterians!!
Saker, I hope you will follow thru on your promise to write about the Jewish/Zio influence on Germany in the WW’s….something along the lines of your history of the Russian/Polish and Christian vs. Orthodoxy influence on Ukraine. Your writings are a wonderful balance between textbook history and revisionism. Please hang in there!!
To put it bluntly, the putsch in the Ukraine corroborates to the hilt Georgi Dimitrov’s 1935 assessment to the effect that “Fascism is the openly terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialistic elements of finance capital”. Indeed, George Soros, his NGO swamp, and the utter filth masquerading as “The International Community” which all engineered this putsch fit the above description exactly.
Now, fascist Ukraine — just like Nazi Germany, Zionist Israel, and the US Settler Reich — shows that fascism cannot function without a social mass base hardened by some kind of popular oppressor ideology. As for German Nazism and Jewish Zionism, these are direct spawns of Americanism pure and simple. To wit: land-grabbing, lawlessness, enslavement, war, racist genocide and — yes! — a hideously ugly (body and soul alike) flag-waving, braindead Herrenvolk constituency back home. In the case of piss-poor Ukraine, however, the drooling gangsters now in charge just have no spoils available with which to bribe their own destitute subjects, thus achieving domestic social peace. And this problem is aggravated further still since the ailing West is hell-bent on driving the country to an economic all-out meltdown. So the Ukros’ “popular oppressor ideology” amounts, first and foremost, to violent Russophobia. But this is at their own risk.
His Saker
So, here we go again. History is repeating itself. Today the West (or the Empire should I say ?) is propping up the Nazis in Ukraine to counter Russia, as it did in the 30′ with Hitler to counter Stalin’s USSR and the spread of Bolshevism (e.g. see Anthony Sutton).
I completely understand your dilemma as I am for free speech. However, I also suspect the trolls polluting your blog are mostly “agents provocateurs” on a COINTELPRO mission, kind of, to disrupt and torpedo your excellent analysis, which are a far cry from the corporate propaganda.
Therefore, it is good you keep some sanity to the debate and don’t let it ruined by spoilers.
Keep up the good job.
A rationale for automatically changing “jew” to “zionist” is that many U.S. Jews, per polling data, are opposed to or embarrassed by Israeli actions. While some prominent zionist apologists are not Jews (Bolton and Biden), some prominent Jews are not zionists (Max Blumenthal). Those terms tend to alienate people that might otherwise be receptive to Saker’s blog on its merits.
A rational for automatically changing “Nazi” to “fascist” is it is inaccurate: the Nazi party has not existed since 1945. The term is being used polemically, whereas intelligent people can only be convinced by reasional discourse. “Fascist” is the correct term for violent extreme nationalism (see any dictionary), “Nazi” was the name of a party, long defunct. Only elderly Hitler Youth are still influence by it.
Use of both terms detracts from the wider acceptance of Saker’s blog, now cited in Asia Times, inter alia. If readers take time to read the blog comments, the terms make the blog sound like yet another racist tract of some kind.
Moon of Alabama is reporting that Kerry may have basically “given up” as Lavrov is announcing an agreement to work jointly on Ukraine constitutional reform: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/16/us-ukraine-crisis-lavrov-kerry-idUSBREA2F05Y20140316
Also the first US mainstream media article to reflect (if imperfectly) the reality of Ukraine’s situation has also appeared http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-english-ukraine-neofascists-20140313,3347970,5402504.story#axzz2w9XJYcW4
Perhaps some progress towards reality??
You do what you have to do. This is war and trolls are a weapon. A dangerous weapon with all their tricks and deceptions. They are not worth the bother ~ they are cut losses with no tears shed.
just a guess
most anti jew comments are probably from the same sorts who knock over, spray paint jewish grave markers, assorted jewish walls, etc,
i.e.
jews.