Waiting for Arianna

Here is a great little comic from Ted Rall on the AOL purchas of Huffpo

Censor One for the Gipper

I was having an interesting discussion about the legacy of Reagan and the Berlin wall. It started with a post I wrote where I briefly described some interactions I've had with various friends from Germany, Poland, and Russia about the fall of the Berlin wall and communism in general. I've known four people, one German, two Russians, and one Polish immigrant. The Polish guy was my boss for a while and was a mostly far right wing believer who was actually contemptuous of Lek Walenska and the Solidarity movement and the others were girl friends of one kind or another. One was fairly left wing like me and the other two were moderate to conservative. The amazing thing was all these people had one thing in common, they literally LOL'd at the idea that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the fall of communism. They had been there and they knew it was due to the people of the region not some American actor who took credit for it. Here is the thread that got published with the comment from LateBloomer2 that I responded to. (Note: click "Expand Full Thread" to see the whole thread)

Here is my reply which Huffpo deemed inappropriate to post:

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" had NO effect?"

It probably provoked a few laughs. The idea that Ronald Reagan had any moral authority to preach to the USSR about human rights is I'm sorry but just laughable.

Yes, the thugs in Eastern Europe who beat up trade unionists and other people of conscience were evil. But compared to the torture centers and death squads in Central and South America and other parts of the world that were created by US puppets the Eastern Europeans were amateurs. Where the East German or Polish secret police would beat you up the Chileans, Guetamalan­s, and the Central American "Freedom Fighters" would torture you to death and then kill you and anyone whose name you screamed as you were being tortured.

As just one example look up Jennifer Harbury, a US woman who married a Guatemalan national who was tortured to death. We know his story only because he married a well educated US woman but there are thousands of other victims of US disdain for human rights.

Just to be clear I'm not saying the Berlin Wall or anything done by the USSR was justified because of what the US did. I'm just saying that the idea that the US had any moral authority to critique the USSR is not supported by facts and that certainly Gorbachev (as well as the majority of educated people outside the US) knew that.

Yet Another Fed Up Huffpo User

Here is an email from Huffpo user Ely who was fed up with Huffpo's censorship:

I deleted my long-time HuffPo account yesterday, after being completely fed up with what appears to me to be an increasingly censorship-prone "screening policy." I've noticed this before with the occasional screened comment, but lately I feel that it's getting out of control. Many "hot" news stories routinely have hundreds, if not thousands, of comments "pending." It's absolutely ridiculous.

Here's the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

Yesterday, Arianna posted an opinion article on Davos. The gist of at least a portion of the article is that the "economic forum" held in Davos this week is likely to have a "somber" mood, with a major focus on the growing economic disparity between the super rich and the rest of us.

My comment was this (it's from memory, but the "inflammatory" portions are definitely preserved):

"It seems ironic that you speak of Davos as a means towards solving the growing economic disparity, when Davos itself is a perfect example of that disparity. It's an ultra-exclusive, invite only, super expensive (many participants spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to be there) party for the super-elite. The NYT recently described it as "successful people wanting to be seen with other successful people.

Do you really believe participants will be feeling "somber" about the crumbling middle class as they celebrate their record corporate profits (despite laying off half their workers)? If they actually cared, they'd invest the millions of dollars spent on the event on the people they claim to want to help, rather than on themselves."

Obviously the comment is pissed-off, but it's an honest comment that I believe should be seen as criticism - not anything worthy of censorship. There is no profanity, no incitement to violence, copyright infringement - in short, nothing that violates HP's "guiding principles" for screening comments.

I believe this comment was censored because it disagreed with Ms. Huffington's perspective on the matter. I find it ironic that she's of the progressive liberal ilk, but runs her newspaper like a dictatorship, complete with active censorship of any opinion that undermines her own.

Once I realized I had been censored, I posted another comment talking about how HP censors comments, unless they kiss the butt of the author's viewpoint or the HP's viewpoint. Obviously that comment never saw the light of day either.

That's my story. Thanks for giving those of us that are fed up with this whole thing a forum in which to vent! My guess is that you're likely to get more of these kinds of emails, because, as I said above, it appears that the censorship is getting worse, not better.

Best,
Ely

Censorship Always Derails the most Interesting Discussions

I couldn't resist commenting on an article about Egypt. It didn't take long for censorship to kick in. In this case it wasn't my comment that got censored but the comment of someone I was debating with. Why his/her comment was censored I have no idea. Here is the initial thread: from a Huffpo article about the protests in Egypt

ResearchtheFacts responded to my last comment about Female Genital Mutilation with the following:

Some of the crap we have going on over here under the cloak of darkness.  You have sex slavery going on utilizing children.  How civilized is that?  Where is your protest for the little girls being pimped out every night?

I wrote a reply to that but as I posted it I got the "You are replying to a comment that has been deleted" message. Here is the comment I tried to post:

Why do you assume that I don't condemn the US for "the crap we have going on over here"? I absolutely do. I don't claim the US is the pinnacle of civilization. In fact if you look at all my comments just on this article I believe the US has a great deal of responsibility for the tyrany in Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east. I just think its ludicrous to think that oppression is OK in any form, that just because the US has behaved abysmally that the world should look the other way when people who resist the US also act abysmally.

This is a good example of how foolish the censorship at Huffpo is. This happens to me just about every time I try to have an interesting discussion with someone. Just as we are getting to some intersting point of discussion we end up being blocked by the censorship system.

Defusing Propaganda

Haven't posted anything recently but its not because HP has stopped censoring. I and others who make substantial comments on political issues have for the most part stopped commenting there. I couldn't resist commenting on an article that was trying to whip up fear of the smoking gun in form of a mushroom cloud. Although this time it wasn't Iraq it was Venezuela. Here is my comment that never made it past censorship:

Except there is no actual evidence, zero, that Venezuela has any interest in nuclear weapons. The propoganda capability of places like the Cato institute is truly amazing. Venezuala hasn't attacked anyone, they have a minimal military budget, and they comply with UN processes and treaties.

The US on the other hand has never signed the nuclear non-prolif­eration treaty, has supported other non-signat­ory countries such as Israel in developing nuclear weapons and supported a military overthrow of their democratic­ally elected government of Venezuela several years ago. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that Venezuela is the threat to world peace because they want to have peaceful nuclear power and most people in the US take that as a serious issue worth discussing rather then the obvious nonsense it is.

As Chomsky says Goebells would have envied such an amazing feat of propaganda­.

Censorship Still Going On at Huffpo

I haven't posted any examples of Huffpo censorship lately but just want to make clear its still pretty much as bad as ever there. I've really cut down on my commenting as a result of the censorship. What is the point of commenting if there isn't really free discourse?

Azeem Ibrahim had an interesting article about the biggest lies about Islam recently. Here is a comment I left that was never posted.

"I agree with this article but I think you left off the most important lie about Islam:

Lie Four: The main thing that motivates Islamic terrorists is their fanatic faith.

The emphasis on Islam hides the far greater issue of the countless crimes committed against the Islamic world between the end of the second world war and the present. A very short list: overthrowing a democratic, secular government in Iran and imposing a dictator who ruled through torture, shooting down an Iranian civilian aircraft and rather than apologizing giving the captain a medal, supporting Israel by regularly ignoring and vetoing UN resolutions that have backing from virtually the rest of the world, destroying a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and depriving the region of one of the few needed sources for medicine, supporting tyranical governments that don't have the support of their people in Egypt and Saudi Arabia,...

It is issues such as these that really drive things such as the 9/11 attacks but to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge US crimes which is pretty much forbidden in the US MSM."

As usual I believe this comment was well within the bounds of Huffpo's published guidelines. I think one likely reason it wasn't published was the mild implied criticism of Israel. I've noticed quite often that even the most modest criticism of Israel -- as this was my point about UN resolutions is an incontestable fact -- prohibits comments from being published.

New Blogs

Here are two new blogs that might be of interest to people:

Huffington Toast: A progressive alternative to HP Censorship

Huffington Post Anti-Science: Documenting the poor science reporting found at the Huffington Post.