Troglodytes Running the Ship: Commentary Collapse [Updated with an Editorial and Amended]

Commentary Collapse [Updated with an Editorial and Amended]

[Image: Artists commenting on society, Mr. Fish]

Published: 2022-09-20

Stop Press: 2022-09-21. Joe Lauria, Editor in Chief of Consortium News, has commented on the article, and requested its removal. Consideration will be applied after a night’s sleep. See his comment below.

Update 2022-09-21: An update to the article, including the comment by Joe Lauria, has been added. In the article itself, corrections are made where previous statements were misleading.

Update 2022-09-23: The Introduction and Editorial section was added, and all note of the second, ascerbic comment, never intended to be published, has been removed.

Update 2022-10-06: Evidence of the denial of a comment to CN is provided.

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Introduction and Editorial

This author and newsletter offer a sincere and formal apology to Consortium News (CN) for an element of the original story below which was and remains entirely false. More on this below. The author and editor are contrite and hope that no loss of reputation was suffered by CN or its staff.

Mr. Lauria, the Editor-in-Chief of CN, commented to the newsletter as to the falsehood. The article was updated to indicate where false claims were being made. Mr. Lauria then, having requested the removal of the article, commented that CN was being libeled.

We all make mistakes. The publishing of this article was a mistake. Months ago when a previous article erred, less egregiously, the author and editor came to the conclusion that the best strategy was to amend the article and clarify any misleading claim with parenthetic comments. The article was to remain to remind the author that errors can be made and should be guarded against. Its also a form of honesty with the readership.

Besides this Introduction and Editorial comment, the nature of the false claim will be outlined immediately below. Additionally, any sentence in this article which makes the false claim or implies it, or otherwise implies censorial motives by CN’s staff will be changed to use an italic font, and be struck through, like this.

Finally, the audio recording which accompanied this article has been removed.

It is hoped that by this combination of actions, the apology offered to CN will be accepted.

The False Claim

The article claimed that a short comment which praised the work of Mr. Fish, an excellent graphic artist, was disapproved or denied by CN's comments moderation team. This is entirely false. The comment was submitted at 05:56 am local time at CN on 20th September 2022 and was approved for publication some 4 hours later around 10:00 am local time.

Elsewhere, the article implied that CN is censoring comments submitted by the author. This is patently false for two reasons. The initial comment was approved. The second "comment", a polemic, was never designed to be published. All reference to that second “comment” has been removed from this article. It was extraneous and emotional.

Secondly, moderating a comments section is not censoring. As noted elsewhere in the article, maintaining a comments section is a difficult job, and CN are to be praised for maintaining one.

Troglodytes Running the Ship

A concept that the protesters behind the illegal and insane incarceration of Julian Assange have yet to grasp is to replace his name with "Jane Smith". The issue is not about the man, but about press freedom. The case of his persecution, and the nature of the core issue is well described in Juan Passarelli's just published documentary.

There is a more insidious aspect. While the documentary describes the heinous abuse of legal process applied to Mr. Assange, and some of the chilling effect this has on journalism, there is a more widespread evil at hand.

The first aspect is that persons are required to use verifiable identities and/or internet addresses to comment on news articles, if comments are allowed. The next is that, if "verifiable" identities say things which are not appreciated they are "moderated" out of existence. Moderation is complex and difficult, and any publisher supporting commentary has a very difficult task dealing with general internet trolls and the military intelligence version thereof. Hi, UK 77th Brigade.

Given the level of media propaganda following the Russian escalation of the preceding 8 year war in Ukraine, one should expect a clamp down on commentary on this topic, at least. A problem one may have is where it occurs. Major social media sites like BookFace and Twitster are expected to perform the censorial role requested of them by USA legislators.

Consortium News (CN) is a site founded by the late Robert Parry, a paragon of investigative journalism. How would he feel about having the comment section of the site which he founded some 25+ years ago moderated by ideologues or those unable to assess the material incoming?

CN published a great article by Chris Hedges titled "Strike! Strike! Strike!". The leading graphic to that article is by Mr. Fish. It, the graphic, is a heart piercing direct declaration of the struggle. It embodies the article. It is a brilliant piece of graphic art. Short, sharp and to the bloody point.

Your author saw the article, and without having read a single word penned a comment acknowledging the brilliance of the graphic. I'm not a graphic artist, but I feel when graphic art hits me hard. This was one of those occasions. Arts, all of them, graphic, musical, performative deserve mention and acknowledgment as a part of our culture when they serve their key purpose of commentary on society.

I mean, c'mon, this is a great graphic.

Accordingly, I penned a short praise of the work and artist, submitted it to the CN moderators for their consideration.

Name: YesXorNo

Email: yesxorno@[no-need-to-publish-this]

Text:

What a WONDERFUL graphic. Mr. Fish has excelled.

If one takes a little time, one can see the careful work. But one needs not. It just hits directly. A cursory glance delivers the message.

Brilliant graphics, Mr. Fish

Their response was:

Nope

[The comment was approved some 4 hours later. ]

To help everyone cry, I knew that my simple message of praise for a graphic artist would be disapproved [it was not, it was approved]. So, I also sent it directly to the artist. Our exchange involved him deflecting the praise, as many artists do. He finally acknowledged that which I was praising:

Bless your heart.

Yes, artists, we love you. We love you when you shine a light into excluded spaces. We love you when you remind us that humans are humans and that all of the divisions imposed race, colour, religion, sexual preference etc. are bunkum. Help us, artists. Raise us. Help us to see, hear and feel!!

The expected disapproval of a simple, short message praising an artist became apparent. The CN moderators were doing their job without understanding what it was. I must have posted some comment months before which was "unacceptable" and now my submissions are on a blacklist. This is the automisation of control of exchange.

You make one mistake and you are blacklisted. What you say thereafter is opaque. It is disallowed.

[The second acerbic comment to CN moderators is removed.]

Consortium News is a wonderful publication, and this author has respect for its Editor, Joe Lauria. Its content moderation staff need a serious kick up the behind.

Blacklisting praise of art is not a good look. [They did not, the comment was approved, 4 hours later.]

Update

Joe Lauria, Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News comments:

This is absolute rubbish. Your comment was the very first one published under Chris' article. You submitted your comment at 5:56 am EDT, when most people on the East Coast of the US are still asleep. It was published shortly after 10 am as we began work. Please take down this article. --Joe Lauria, CN editor.

Let it be known that I have both praised CN and their Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Lauria. He is scrupulous in adhering to verifiable information. His provision of the time of submission for the comment must be seen as accurate. The comment was approved, and is published.

Here ends the "rubbish".

This author gave up on commenting to CN a year ago. Comments even those short and containing nothing more than praise for a writer, were not approved. This history precedes the expectation [the false claim] proclaimed in this article.

As an important aside, alluded to above, a comments section is a poison. It requires attention to prevent people polluting the space. Some commentators are paid by governments. Thus, the importance of moderation. It is a horrid job and this author would not wish it on anyone. CN are to be praised for maintaining a comments section.

CN is a reader funded organisation which recently had a major financial conduit sever their readership from their funding. CN was under financial attack from unknown players via PayPal. This echoes earlier attacks on Wikileaks. We should be doubly proud of CN for maintaining a comments section when under financial duress.

I will, however, not "take down this article" as requested by Mr. Lauria. Its contents are not just based on the one event [the false claim], but a history. Readers may have had similar annoyances with other publishers.

The article has been amended to note factual inaccuracies in its initial publishing. That an Editor-in-Chief wants the article "taken down" is, in itself, a comment on our times. [Mr. Lauria was defending the reputation of the publication which he leads, and offering salient legal advice.]

Lastly, CN forces us to visit its site to know what it publishes. It does not provide an RSS feed. Also, it denies anonymous reading of its articles as its firewall blocks Tor exit nodes. All of this is combined with my previous frustration in having comments not approved.

Nonetheless, I wish CN all the best. CN is an important publisher in the non-MSM sphere.

Evidence

In the above, I claim that many previous comments to Consortium News have been denied/disapproved. I had not recorded them so could not provide evidence to support the claim. Here, I provide the most recent.

As of 2022-10-06 10:31 11:20 CEST a comment submitted to Consortium News has been delisted as "Awaiting approval" and disappeared. It seems reasonable to assume that it is thus "not approved".

The URL for the submitted, awaiting approval, comment was:

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/10/04/chris-hedges-the-greatest-evil-is-war/?unapproved=442763&moderation-hash=cf06e4f4b271bcbfdf0ffffa99dabb67#comment-442763

The comment was in response to Chris Hedges' article titled "The Greatest Evil is War". The comment is given below. First, here is a part of an approved comment by another reader of the same article:

There is no global Gandhian revolution of human consciousness rising up to challenge wars of aggression or eco suicide . Many of us dreamed of it for many generations; Jesus taught it, Laotse, MLK, the Navajos, sitting Bull, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, George Fox, The Hutterite’s, Dorothy Day. When Palestinians marched to their own borders unarmed, they were met with violence and who came to their support? When Trump ended the Iran nuclear agreement and restarted sanctions, which European supporters of the agreement boldly refused the sanctions? I am, at 71, no longer sure that there is any meaning to the abstractions of good and evil. If someone attacks me or another in my sight I will do what I can to stop it. It is easy to see who the most violent and unscrupulous power on earth is, and I fully support Russia’s war to stop their aggression and protect themselves and the Donbass using a remarkably restrained military operation. The Anglo empire will fall and the sooner the better.

I am grateful to Consortium News for allowing this comment's publication.

My disapproved comment was:

“War is a Racket”, Major General (US Marine Corp), twice recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Smedley Butler.

I have long held that a portrait of this patriot should be hung in the oval office of the White House.

https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-123-meet-smedley-butler/

The disapproved comment's three sentences are:

1. A matter of fact: "War is a Racket" is the title of a pamphlet published by Smedley Butler. He was twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor. To quote Wikipedia, he is "the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions" which is to say that he, now deceased, is the most exclusively decorated Marine in USA history.

2. An opinion: May one not propose which portraits hang in the oval office? Why not the most decorated Marine in USA history?

3. A link to an audio recording which provides historical detail of Smedley Butler. It covers his support of WWI USA soldiers who were denied their pay. It also addresses the "Business Plot", a significant event in USA history.

Included in the audio link is a small component of Smedley Butler's speech to the unpaid veterans at the "Bonus March" in 1932. Butler declares to them:

Take it from me, this is the greatest demonstration of Americanism we have ever had.

[This excerpt can be heard starting at 00:19:25 in the podcast audio.]

The denial of this small comment, including fact, a benign opinion and a link to material of important USA history is confusing. Perhaps it was flagged by some algorithm which judges any link to The Corbett Report as “dangerous”.

The evident reality is that the comment section at Consortium News is preventing a comment composed of established fact, a harmless opinion and a link to an audio recording documenting important history of the nation in which the publication is incorporated.

Learn about USMC Major General Smedley Darlington Butler and his transformation from a warrior to a man of peace. Learn of his defense of the rights of soldiers. Learn about him exposing a potential fascist coup in the USA at a congressional committee.

Butler was a sincere patriot. His legacy inspires.

Sources

Chris Hedges: Strike! Strike! Strike!, Chris Hedges, Consortium News, 2022-09-20

Episode 123 - Meet Smedley Butler, James Corbett, CorbettReport, 2010-03-28

WATCH: CN Live! — ‘The War on Journalism’, CN Live, Consortium News, 2022-09-18

The Passerelli documentary begins at 00:05:34

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