Banned.

"Dear Jay,

Your posting rights have been rescinded. I refer you to the following passage of our community standards:

"Participants who seriously, persistently or wilfully ignore the community standards, participation guidelines or terms and conditions will have their posting privileges for all guardian.co.uk community areas withdrawn."

Regards,

Adam"


They let little BNP trolls fill the threads but i am banned for calling Tony Blair, a war criminal, a cunt. No warning, no email, just banned. "Comment is Free".....

Wait a minute, who are those four horsemen?

Please try to spare me the tinfoil helmet taunts, but I’m beginning to look suspiciously at anyone sneezing within 10 metres of me. On the other hand, I’m also feeling a slight shiver of excitement. I’ve read lots of posts from people who know exactly what is or is not going to happen but tell us: how do you feel about it? Any fears or fantasies to share?

Individualism and Class Action

Was going to reply to this in the current thread but decided to post as a new thread.

We are all individuals and at the same time members of larger society.

I have an identity as a mum (not a grandmother yet but still hoping!), but as a mother who is working class (in the Marxist not the British class system sense) I depended on government to provide the education I needed for my child.

As an elderly person I depend on government that will address the issue of pensioner poverty both now and in the future (it is going to get worse unless something is done).

As a patient with heart failure on a lot of medication I depend on a government to continue to supply my medication free (It would cost me £60 pm and I couldn’t afford that).

In this context I am viewing government as the means by which essential services can be provided for all especially those who cannot afford to pay for them privately. Thus redistrubting wealth from rich to poor.

I need to be able to influence the government, Now there are individuals who can do that by they have the wealth power and influence most of us don’t have. Most of us cannot influence the government as individuals they just don’t listen. The people without wealth, power and influence are generally described as working class.

So we need to combine with other working class people to obtain the strength that can come with collective action.

This does not actually prevent individuality, its not necessary for me to martial the whole working class for every issue. If its pensions I can call up the national Pensioners Convention, as a worker I could call on the support of my union, on NHS matters The Patients Association can organise. In each of these cases the active participation of individuals strengthens the organisation. But this not ‘identity politics’ as this is generally understood.

To quote the old Labour Movement motto ‘Unity is Strength’. It what gave us free state education, the NHS and the Open University state pensions as we know them and unemployment insurance.

But we need a voice in Parliament. We used to have it, it was called the Labour Party. In the 70’s and 80’s, identity politics namely fighting sexism and racism, instead of forming an important part of united working class politics they actually replaced it.

This has resulted in great advances for mainly middle class women and blacks leaving all the working class (women, blacks, Asians and white working class men) with no voice in the party.

AS a result the traditional Labour constituency has been lost. For the first time independent Labour candidates have in some cases beaten the official Labour candidate.

This is the identity politics that I am talking about. It is this agenda that created Nulabour and it is this agenda that the Guardian supports and I maintain, defends it with modding policy on Cif.

The Untrusted

It's been an interesting couple of days since I got back from the wilds of Corfu... Woolly has been added to the list of the inexplicably untrusted while others continue to exploit the entrenched inconsistencies of cif moderation. Cif often reminds me of a Hong kong martial arts film, utter mayhem from every corner, flying kicks from bloggers, posters and mods all over the shop and no real plot to speak of! I love it that this space has started to grow into a refuge to vent uncensored and that it's changing all the time, with more and more people joining in. And apart from things like name changes, I'd love to see more opinion pieces posted up here, too, and not necessarily CiF related. Plenty of room round here, I reckon, for the untrusted and the precariously trusted to say just what they want...

Kizbot needs your help

Kizbot is in a bit of a pickle. She doesn't know how to post a new thread. It's all Greek to her. Can you help?

A blog by any other name...

Not to go all poll-happy on everyone, but since we've decided the place is taking on a bit more of it's own aura, we're wondering if a new name (replacing The Thread Never Ends...)might be in order.  The thought is that, even though CiF has brought us all here, we don't want to feel too bound to Mother CiF (obviously, we're a bastard love-child) in the topics discussed.  Are we a teahouse?  Are we a pub?  Maybe you're happy with the Thread?  I'm going to give you from now until about midnight Friday (that's midnight for most of you - about 6 pm for me) to come up with suggestions for a new name.  Then, I'll close out the poll about the Bygone Ciffers and slap up a new one with the suggestions for a new name.  Staying the same will be an option.

Please note:  the URL will remain the same.  The only thing that will change is the bit at the top of the page where it says "The Thread Never Ends..."

And, yes, the ellipsis is my favourite punctuation.  Closely followed by the em dash/em rule.

Roll of Honour?

Following the inclusion of individuals such as DavidTHarryBlog and JeremyHP on the list of ex-Ciffers, some of us felt rather squeamish about the name Roll of Honour. Furthermore, we have started to include posters who have either passed away or have 'disappeared' (i.e. stopped contributing for whatever reason and won't be returning). 

Montana has (provisionally?) changed it to The Banned and The Dead, but I feel there is something blunt about 'The Dead'. Frank Fisher, on the other hand, sees no problem with that (precisely because it's blunt...?). He half-jokingly suggests The Disappeared, which would be useful but for the historical connotations. Montana reckons something like The Good, The Bad and The Banned or The Banned Played On would be apt. For those appreciative of Queen I recommend The Nevermores.

Any other suggestions?

Who else is missing?

Fight the Power!

Too many good Cif contributors are being banned.  Comment is free, as long as it doesn't offend the sensibilities of the moderators.  The truly frustrating thing is, there doesn't seem to be any effective means of protesting these decisions.  Sometimes we don't even know if someone's been banned or if they've just drifted away.  One thing we can do is to keep a record of the Cif posters who've been silenced by the arbitrary whims of the powers that be.  You'll notice just to the right a new feature - a "Roll of Honour" list of Ciffers who've been banned.  I've put the four most recent ones on the list.  Please comment below with names of other Ciffers who should be remembered here and I will add them to the list.

BTW - Nemesis isn't on the Roll yet because his profile is still up.  Nothing posted since 29 March.  Anybody know for sure that he's been banned?

Sure has been quiet lately...

Here and on Cif.  Everybody busy or not getting inspired by anything from Cif?

Sometimes we Iowans get it right...

The Supreme Court of the Iowa territorial government got it right in 1839 when, in their very first ruling, they struck down slavery laws.

We got it right when we protected escaped slaves from capture and return to the South, even though federal law gave Southern states the right to send bounty hunters to the North to reclaim slaves.

We got it right in the Civil War, when a higher percentage of our men fought for the Union cause than any other state.

We got it right in 1965, when capital punishment was outlawed here.

We got it right when we became the first state to send a young black woman to represent us in the Miss USA pageant in 1969, even though the population was 97% white.

We got it right when our Republican governor declared Iowa a haven for refugees fleeing Viet Nam after the US withdrew and spent state funds to help those people get here and settle.

Today, the Iowa Supreme Court got it right again in ruling unanimously that it violates the state constitution to deny homosexual couples the right to civil marriage.  We are only the third state in the US to do so and the first in the Midwest.  Amending the Iowa state constitution is very difficult, so it is highly unlikely that this decision will be overturned.

I know it's got feck all to do with Cif - but I just found out and I'm just so freaking proud of my state right now - I had to share.

I have nothing important to say

But, I'm off to my bed now, after having slogged through the Gold thread, the Rap/Misogyny thread and, apparently, after marking myself as a fascist on the Berlins thread about prisoners being given the right to vote.  *Sigh*  It's been a quite a night.  Anyway, we're at 164 comments on Monkeyfish's thread, so I thought I'd start a new one before we hit the "200 comments sends us to a 2nd page" mark - which would, inevitably, happen while I'm sleeping/working.  Do go down to the bottom of Monkey's thread to make sure you've read everything.  Back in approx. 15 hours...