I don’t like telling tales like that, but the comment had been sitting there for some hours until I reported it and it was removed.

It seems astonishing to me that some of the things posted by people like berchmans, moeran, laritournelle, and the rest are tolerated. The GWV seems to regard them as jokey banter rather than deadly serious statements with consequences.

PeterParker

Live long…and long live freedom of speech.

Taking out a lot of irrelevant things CiF Watch still seems to have at least 20,000 entries.

The result of a search on google.co.uk returns 569,000 entries:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=CiF+Watch&btnG=Google+Search&meta=lr%3D&aq=f&oq=

I really love this sensible and funny denouement of the GWV – priceless and spot on. Good to learn about ‘pre-moderation’, i.e. the practice of posting and then being told your post will be moderated before it appears. I wrote complaining about this to Georgina Henry because I didn’t know what was going on. She wrote back to say she would pass it on to the mods for them to deal with. I’ve yet to hear more.

I do hope we can get the more of the media aware of what the Grauniad is doing – its ripe for exposure and being exposed for what it’s become.

Re Henry Ford. Please don’t delete his comments. Its good to see some unreconstructed race hate to remind us all of what’s what’s really behind much of the underlying antisemitism that appears on CiF.

Quite funny really! The unintended consequences of the swine flu panic? Like the breast-feeding fatwa, or the rumored Israeli attempt to sterilize Egyptians with bubble gum, you couldn’t make this stuff up!!

There’s a funny picture of goats eating the trash now the pigs are gone. I suppose its an ecologically friendly way to deal with the problem, but it was disconcerting to read in the article about this special group of garbage collectors who live in the cliffs around Cairo. It gives one an idea of the poverty in that country. I’ve just been reading Alan Moorehead’s books “The White Nile” and “The Blue Nile” and he references those cliff dwellings from the 1800s – time seems to move slowly in Cairo.

————

Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp

Cairo is even more full of rubbish and filth than before.

Rather a graphic example of the GWV and the frustration it causes.

PeterNW1 should try moving his comments to a site where comment is free and facts are sacred.

———–

From Khaled Diab’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about fatwas in Egypt:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/19/fatwa-rulings-fashion-religion

peterNW1
20 Sep 09, 9:01am (about 13 hours ago)

This was the jist of my deleted post …

Khaled tells us that hijabless women are becoming “an increasingly marginalised minority.” Since 15% of Egyptians are Christian Copts, it’s pretty clear that that marginalised minority is going to be the Copts. The Copts are an underclass in Egypt who suffer both official discrimination (Copts have to get government permission to build (or even renovate) a church while there is no similar legislation for mosques; Copts are also discriminated against in public-sector job recruitment) and unofficial discrimination (there is a constant drum beat of news reports of hate-crime and physical assaults against Copts.) Khaled has written a number of informative and entertaining articles on Egyptian society, but as far as I know, he has never addressed the plight of his country’s underclass.

I cannot see why that post was deleted (unless the Guardian has started employing Egyptian government officials as moderators.) The facts in my post can easily be checked online …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copt

I ask the moderators again – why was it deleted?

—-

VoltaireRules
20 Sep 09, 9:52am (about 12 hours ago)

peterNW1

Maybe the Mods apply Islamics Norms or Islamic articles

I think it would be good to have a few more introspective articles highlighting social issues like this.

Maybe Ingla BugerdifIcanspellhisname could do one on the tolerance of Christians and Hindus in Pakistan.

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peterNW1
20 Sep 09, 6:30pm (about 3 hours ago)

VoltaireRules writes …

“peterNW1 Maybe the mods apply Islamic norms for Islamic articles”

I’m not sure what you mean by “Islamic norms”, but if it is true that articles on Islamic subjects written by Muslims (or articles on Islamic subjects written by non-Muslims) are indeed moderated according to a different set of criteria from the rest of Comment Is Free (and even from the rest of the Belief section), then surely it would be reasonable to state somewhere on Cif what those criteria are?

The current system, when perfectly inoffensive posts are deleted simply because a moderator disagrees with their contents, is bewildering and — one would have thought — contrrary to the spirit of Comment is Free.

If so, it is yet another indication of the Guardian’s role in attracting anti-Semites and thus indirectly stoking hatred of Jews, even if Henry Ford was not permitted to post the kinds of things s/he has posted here.

Henry – if you’re out there reading this please let me know what led you to this site – I’m curious to know if it was via references on CIF.

You should post your opinion on CIF. There you will have many recommendations and the applause of Berchmans – even you could have invited to contribute above the line.