The biggest liberal website out there online, Common Dreams, informs us with its headline today that ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES: HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. Common Dreams has become a major resource for the US Left and liberal community in the last couple of years through its posting of many important commentaries by Leftists and liberals plus its convenient links that many of us use quite often. Unfortunately there is a big weakness of the site, and that is their censorship of commentaries, writers, and readers who are not completely 100% on board with their ‘support the lesser of two evils’, pro-Democratic Party point of view.
As a result, when I go to read their headline, I today get the message that THE WEBSITE DECLINED TO SHOW THIS WEBPAGE (to me) HTTP 403 FORBIDDEN. What is Common Dreams scared of from me?
The exact post I made to one of their commentaries that got me blacklisted from their site was made on election night and was linked the following day to a commentary at Common Dreams, from the one I made here on Not My Tribe titled Sadly, Barack Obama will probably get us OUT of Iraq by getting us INTO Iran. Many people who read Common Dreams material link to other commentaries that back up their opinions and beliefs, and I merely did the same.
But this belief that Obama’s election will lead to yet more war ran counter to their cheeleading for the Democratic Party, and earned me their shunning. And you know what? I still think it is most probable that attacking Iran is a most possible final result, post national arrival of Obama into the White House. How will the Common Dreams’ censor feel if this actually happens? Will he/ she remember the decision to put me permanentl offline from their site, for simply making this observation? Probably not.
I certainly do not feel all alone at all in being treated so shabbily by the Common Dreams Democratic Party cheerleading censor on their site. The site shuns many others, too, including the Libertarian site ANTIWAR.COM that it has never chosen to link to and acts as if the site does not exist. ANTIWAR.COM, you see, is a major resource for those who oppose what they call one of the War Parties, the Democrats? Can’t do that per play book of Common Dreams censorship. Not at all if you want publication there.
Also of note, is that Common Dreams likes anarchists somewhat, linking to the giant academician anarchist site, Znet, but has no links to overt Marxist links. Major antiwar activists (and presidential candidates) like Gloria La Riva will never see any comment of theirs allowed the Common Dreams site. CENSORED by the CD group-ling of ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES:HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. More like BLOCKING, I would say, and Common Dreams doesn’t like people that are aware of that, and will comment to that effect on their pro-Democratic Party site.
I could list many people whose comments will never appear at Common Dreams, merely because they are activist Marxists. Many academic anarchists act at election time though as Social Democrats, and Social Democrats can be easily herded into voting Democratic Party in the US. ALLOWED.
The thing about Common Dreams is that they are not real honest, and pretend often to have no bias for the Democrat Party even as they push them with countless articles praising people like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, et al. With the final days to push to get Barack Obama elected though, they seem to have dropped much of their camouflage and subterfuge and the long time effects will be to make their site less attractive to people who actually do want uncensored Left opinion, and not just cheerleading for the new DP executives in power. The CD approach to activism is to try to herd all ‘Progressives’ into voting the Democratic Party. It really is about that plain and simple, but it would be much better for activism if this major Left resource in the US had a less sectarian and less Democratic Party partisan approach.
So to the question is it Common Dreams, or is it censorship in common with the corporate media? I leave you to contemplate that question? For me, I just know that I can no longer read the site on my home computer, let alone comment on their posted articles, all because I do not share their ‘common dream’, which seems narrowly limited to getting the Democratic Party politicians into office, and propagandizing for them. That’s why I see them as being so like the corporate media itself, which will only endorse one of the two corporate parties, and will censor those who want a different world.
As to those whose commentaries are promoted by Common Dreams? I will be writing to at least one of them, Ira Chernus who lives here in Colorado, and asking him what it feels like to have article after article of his promoting the idea of voting Democratic Party this last election published on the Common Dreams site, and then finding out how Common Dreams has censors who keep opposing ideas to his own offline at their Common Dreams site? I don’t think that Ira, or many of the other nice liberal Democratic Party voting writers, have given this censorship much thought. It reflects poorly on them though, when Common Dreams publishes their commentaries and then keeps ‘Progressives’ from actually being able to challenge their POV. Ira, that is censorship. Have you anything much to say about this?
PS.. That picture above is of Ira Chernus, whose multiple articles framed the Common Dreams site the last weeks of the election. He is a professor who happens to live in The Democratic Party Peoples Republic of Boulder.
I likewise started receiving a HTTP 403 error shortly after the election when me or anyone in my federal government office tries to access any article in Commondreams.org. And, I likewise posted comments skeptical of Obama from the left.
At my home computer, wiht Verison as my ISP, I found that I was able to access articles, but was unable to log in under my account under the moniker “USAn”.
So, I logged in under my alternate account “PJD” and added the signature line: “formerly “USAn” but CD is no longer allowing access, for some reason”. The next day all but one post under this account (the least controversial one – a technical discussion regarding mining methods and mountaintop removal) were removed, and the specified signature line in the account had been removed.
I also requested a new password for the “USAn” account, and under the one-time login for a password change I was able to again post under “USAn”, but when I logged out and attempted to login again under “USAn” I was again locked out – under the message that “USAn” was a reserved name. So, I was apparently temporarily cheating the censor only because of technical glitch.
Tony, you might try to reset your IP address and see if you can access Commondreams. In in my case even co-workers are getting HTTP403 errors, so this suggests a blanket server-wide denial – in my case, the server that is used by a large part of the federal agency MSHA – which is based in the Federal Center in Lakewood Colorado. Note that I think that HTTP403 errors come from the recipients server, not the web pages hosting server, so I’m not sure Commndreams is causing this.
Can a more internet-protocol literate person verify this?
Comondreams does censor, no doubt about it, but the HTTP 403 shenanigans may actually be the work of a right winger at your ISP. Remember as compromised as we know Commondreams to be, it would be considered an extremist left site by most Republicans.
Interesting stuff, Paul. Several weeks back, I also wrote a commentary on this blog about how Common Dreams apparently deliberately ‘lamed’ its commentary section that it maintains for the articles it posted online, by simply hiding them away. More and more readers were posting comments questioning their line of supporting the Democrats all the time. Remember when they went to that new format? It happened just recently, and only several weeks right before the election was held, in fact. The new formatting made it harder to hold a coherent dialog and made it harder for readers to directly access the comments section. Many other readers were making the same observations and holding the same opinion for the motivations of the change.
I will reset my ISP address when I get the chance, but quite frankly I doubt that that is the problem. I also doubt that Right Wingers somehow are interfering with the site and our reception of it. The reason I think that that probably is not the case, is simply that I have written to Common Dreams 3 times now about what is going on, and have not received even one response back from them at all. That, to me, suggests that they are deliberately doing what is happening. I could be wrong, and if so, I will print an apology to the site for any false accusations I might have made here at Not My Tribe.
Paul, let us know if you find anything out more about this, will you? Thanks for writing.
After a storm comes a calm 🙂
I was banned from Common Dreams a week or so before the 2008 election. I, too, had written some comments which were critical of the corporate Dems and Republicans, neocon influence in both parties, the ostensibly dead/metaphorical left/right axis, and emphasized my support of Nader. I had been a long-time writer on CD, but took a hiatus for a short while. I wrote a letter of protest to the administrators of CD, but (like everyone else) got no response.
Now, a couple weeks later, I noted that my work IP was recently banned. This tells me that they keep logs of various IP’s that particular users have, for at least a couple weeks, and root out any progressive critical of the Democratic Party.
The trouble is “left” and “right”. Both are idealistic/metaphors which have both lost their abstract referential integrity, and arguably both of which have been subsumed by politics of big money, corporate interests, and (possibly) neocon ideology. CD is a place for leftism in the Big Brother sense, perhaps, but not grassroots/progressive/populist/Nader/Green politics. Therein is CD’s great limitation. My local corporate-owned newspaper allows public comments and I’ve *never* been censored there, and have written much more hard-hitting posts than I did on CD. I’m quite suspicious about CD, who controls it, and what their agenda may be.
I was banned from Commondreams for supporting Nader, and posting comments critical of Obama and the corporate Democrats as well.
It’s sad, really, that a website that promotes itself as a voice for the “progressive” community, has degraded into a party-line vehicle for people who worship corporate Democrats.
They have stopped posting articles from Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nader, and many other truly progressive writers/activists, as well.
It’s sad that Craig Brown let this happen, but at the same time it’s important to note that Mr. Brown has been connected to Democrats for some time, and true progressive ideas, and a belief in freedom of speech are not necessary components of that mindset.
I wish they’d remove their tag-line, because it’s just not true.
I was banned from CD for posting criticism of Obama’s proposed policies during his campaign, and I suppose, also for voicing support for Ralph Nader for president. My posts were deleted and I was denied access to the site. The posts did not contain bad language and were articulate and respectable. Other folks I know who were frequent CD commenters and also Nader supporters seem to have experienced the same treatment.
It was really disappointing at first, considering I had been a supporter of the site.
I think Mr. Brown and his pals are fools. First, because they are not on the side of investigating the truth. Second, because I, as well as others banned from commenting on the site, have donated to them in the past.
We sure won’t be donating any more of our hard-earned money to “Common Dreams”…
Yes, all one has to do is google on ‘commondreams censorship’ to read multiple accounts of the growing censorship problem on that site. Sad to find that the Democratic Party minded once again are trashing dialog, information, and protest.
Our job is simply to make others aware of what’s going on there so that they won’t think it a mere fluke when it does happen to them. Plus, pressure should be put on those Left intellectuals (like UC-Boulder’s Professor Ira Chernus as just one example) who write for Common Dreams and get published on a regular basis at the site. They should be ashamed that they are not helping expose what’s going on. It’s a lack of personal integrity IMO. As I have written before, censorship in Left Circles is a very common problem and should be exposed when it happens.
My log in has been blocked access to sign on Common Dreams. After I donated to them even. Unbelieveable. They have militant zionists posting hateful posts such as “why is it a crime to kill children?” on their site right now, and I have been blocked for supporting Ralph Nader!
Hypocrites.
I got banned too from CD but not because I cussed but because I made it clear that Democrats need to be gunned down for being accomplices to the Republicans. Oh, and they did some redecorating of their site but their banning and censorship stays the same and they’ve increased their editing hostility against dissenters, that is the ones who are truly progressive. Amazingly, the rightwingers and zionists still get to stay. And then they wonder why WY keeps voting Republican !
Here is the funny thing to me about this Common Dreams censorship, by a site that no doubt will claim that it is totally against information-discussion censorship (by others). The funny thing to me is that they started to deny me being able to read their articles the day after their God, Barack Obama, got elected, but I still could go to their site and use it as a links page as I had been doing. Well guess what? On the Inauguration Day of their God, Barack Obama, they shut even that out, and now when I click on their web address, I now get nothing more than an Denied Entry message! No Links Page of theirs for me! I’m being punished. Isn’t that funny?
When liberals, or those calling themselves in any way Left, censor as the Common Dreams site is now doing, it makes them look like just the most pathetic hypocrites just like poster suspiciousbunny called them. In fact, it just leaves a bad smell in the air about the whole thing.
It is so demoralizing when Leftists and liberals do the shunning act to others ala some pastor at a nutty Far Right Church might do to maintain control, or some corporate daily newspaper or mag would act to keep people from questioning The System. Censorship of views on the Left is just totally destructive of building towards any kind of unity and solidarity of any sort. And in the case of the Common Dreams folk, all they actually help earn is the Democratic Party politicians acting in more unity with the Right Wing Republicans they think they oppose so damn much at CD. Just pure stupid on their part! But DP liberals really never do earn any Smartness Awards from anybody watching the results they always obtain. They are like nothing but Repeated Failure.
Progressives need to start a web campaign to convince people to stop donating to CD.
At first, I thought the 403 error might’ve been some technical glitch, but their total lack of response to complaints shows that they have decided to cut off leftists from their site.
Leftists were the life of the site, but no more. I used to think that many Marxists were quite the sectarians (and I still do), but the Democratic Party voting folk actually can more than match them in that department of censorship-bullying. CD is just one among many other examples I have experienced in my lifetime of this DP liberal shunning and expulsion of dissidents from their groups..
I do not condone this, but if you want to see the shoe on the other foot with a sectarian Marxist acting like the common dreams owners, simply go to the latest on Louis Proyect’s Marxism list, where this supposed ‘unrepentant Marxist’ as he self bills himself, has just knocked off his site yet another Marxist who he, the Great Helmsman Louis Proyect, disagreed with.
http://www.marxmail.org/maillist.html
His crime? It was simply that the expelled man, Walter Lippman, was posting an innocuous comment that Barack Obama was actually doing something positive. Walter is a life time marxist radical!
This expulsion of Walter from Proyect’s marxism list is the exact mirror flip side of the CD censors, I think. Arrogance, intolerance, self righteousness, bullying… all masquerading itself as ‘Progressive’ thought and discussion, in some form or the other.
It is a shame that our worst enemies in trying to get things done to change society for the better often times are the liberals themselves. Some times the liberal middle class folk even call themselves ‘unrepentant marxists’! The common dreams folk just label themselves as ‘pragmatists’. Same thing, same result as I see it.
I just wanted to say thank you very much for this article and all the comments on it. I was required to look at the common dream website for a project and this website helped me realise the real goals of the common dreams website!
thanks!!
March 27th 2009 – I just got banned from Common Dreams. They’re still doing it.
The most amazing thing is that if you make a new profile, sneak back on the site, and try to tell others what is going on, they ban you again and erase any mention of their censorship. When I got banned a second time, not only did they erase the comments I had written, but also of anyone else who I had discussed my situation with. It seems that they desperately want to hide their censorship from their readers.
Bethany, I am glad that you found my commentary personally useful. Common Dreams has now allowed me to return and post comments on their site now that their honeymoon with Obama is fading somewhat.
Still, I find that the changes they made to their site in the last half year have greatly cobbled their effectiveness as being alternative media, PLUS, who can rely on a site that has routinely banned so many Left of the Democrats readers before?
‘Joehope’ is another question altogether though. I believe that in one comment on CD I referred to this apologist for Israeli White Phosporus use as being by ‘Joe Hopeless’. In fact, he acts much like the Israeli military propaganda locusts that have plagued this site, and does things at Common Dreams like stringing multiple posts one after each other before anybody else even replies.
I saw at one area he had posted four comments in a row, and I think that CD has the perfect right to protect themselves from this sort of spamming practice. He is the type of Zionist that comes onto a site and pretends to be a ‘progressive’ lawyer type in the style of John Yoo. …lol…. CD finally got tired of this Zionist defending the criminal use of White Phosphorus used against civilians as being legal on its web site. Good for them. Joe the Bummer has the stink of the Internet Megaphone Israeli spam machine about him.
Tony Logan, I’m an individual, not a spammer. My posts are still available online, check them yourself, I did not spam or post the same comment over and over again.
If you don’t like my views. That’s fine. But should I not be allowed to speak? Should unpopular beliefs be censored for being unpopular? I always followed the rules of the forum.
I’m amazed that you would defend banning me from the forum but complain about being banned yourself. If there is ANYTHING I have written on CD that would merit banning me from their site, please feel free to display it here.
How would you feel if CD decided that anyone who frequently defended Nader against democratic attacks was just a spammer and should be banned? It appears that has happened before.
Also, by providing a contrary opinion (however, propagandist) doesn’t this allow for people to refute me and for others to see how my beliefs can be refuted? Would you prefer an echo chamber?
So, it looks like, after a period of quiet, CD is censoring and banning anew.
This time, it was for the temerity of stating the obvious and well known fact that during the last election, CD engaged in silencing criticism of Obama from the left. The most Orwellian thing about this is how opaque – CD censorship is. Surely, it would be a simple matter for the editor could interject and clarify or correct the post that offends them so. But this is never done – you get “disappeared” and that’s that.
But I must say that I am surprised that Joe Hope got kicked out.
The above comment was mine.
CD doesn’t seem much to know what it is doing these days? They are stunned and in a punch drunk stupor from Barack Obama’s kicking of his ‘base’ of his DP voting liberals over and over in the head. Obama’s real ‘base’ is actually with the dominant corporate ruling class that is using him for image repair, but CD’s directors will never figure that simple reality out, or so it most evidently seems.
Meanwhile, they go back and forth kicking Left folk off and on at their website in an almost whimsical manner, and no doubt think that in so doing that they’re just ‘timing out misbehaving KinderGarden children? In other words, these bosses of CD come off as patronizing and censorious wannabe big shots more than anything else when they remove people, and degrade their own cause when they bat people around in this manner so nonchalantly. Because all it does long term is leave a most bad taste in our mouths about their entire manner of constantly pro DP ‘moderating’.
Such liberals often pride themselves in their supposed tolerance but so often it is only ‘tolerance’ when not openly challenged. Right now, I have been allowed back to the site individually, and hopefully so have (or will) most others that have been previously bumped offline??? Let us know if that happens to you, since they do deserve credit if they are seriously reversing their policies of previous censorship? Time will tell…
Tony,
So they are letting you in under you formerly banned ID and e-mail address?
I am only able to get in by setting up a new e-mail account on hotmail or such, using a new ID, and even, to be safe, giving myself a new “real name”.
Paul Donahue, formerly USAn, PJD, PJD1, unsuccessfully “yinzer”, now RRO – my new “real name” is Robert Ritsko (Formerly a mick, I am now a ukie)
Let this be a test to see if the CD censor finds me here! It appears that all this banning is happening in conjunction with a their fundraising campaign.
Yes, all of a sudden I was let back on about 5 or 6 weeks ago and have been posting there quite a bit since.
I have a feeling though that it might have to do with the fact that any google of the words together … Common Dreams censorship… comes up very quickly with this original commentary I wrote on this blog, so I am not exactly convinced that others have been getting the same more decent treatment that I have just been given???
Your case seems to illustrate that I am right to be extremely wary of Common Dreams still. They need to let all the good people they removed without cause back on and for good. Plus, they need to give people responses when we write to them about it!
Even though I have gotten back on and have been posting my usual anti-Democratic Party comments once again, I definitely do not feel sure that all of a sudden they might not once again arbitrarily repeat erasing my access. So I have kind of a wait and see attitude about the place at this time. And an open eye and ear about this issue of their censoring the people they do …
They’ll have to prove themselves over time for me to become convinced that they have really changed. They need to come clean about this problem of theirs and stop treating people in so callous a manner who have done nothing more than basically express their own opinions online at their site.
I just posted the following exchange online at Common Dreams today…
Sometimes I wonder why CD even has a discussion board if the site moderators are going to constantly remove posters and posts so often for no real reasons other than that they don’t like the political content of what the opinions posted? I previously posted my opinion that this apologism for Stephen Zunes by himself for his role in helping justify Nato/ US aggression against Yugoslavia was rather lame. That was removed. Why?
People need to challenge Zunes on his continuing war provoking diatribes against the Serbs, where he asserts ‘the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism’. In my post removed, I said that Zunes had helped prep the attack on Yugoslavia and consequently the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with his most substantial liberal interventionism full of such rhetoric.
I mentioned in that post that he should have been much more concerned back then about the much more real ‘need to challenge US national ethno-fascism’, when he wasn’t concerned about that much at all. His rhetoric, which to this day, he continues to use, provided liberal justification for sitting back and not opposing Nato/ US interventionism, and in fact helped coddle consent with US militarism along for the American public.
If Zunes and Common Dreams cannot tolerate real discussion on the Left I suggest that you just remove your discussion boards altogether. Removing posts and banning posters from your site is a dishonest way of trying to channel debate. ‘Nuff said. Continuing such will almost certainly rebound negatively against yourselves over time. So stop removing political opinions counter to your own, OK?
Another good reason for this Socialist to never vote Democrat again…I am banned for a third time, and, will have to find another proxy, or maybe I just wont bother.
Common Dremas has lost alot of good posters with their fascist censorship behavior.
Yup, the bannings, post deletions, and IP address blocks continue.
This time it was due to comments on an article by Craig Brown himself, called “It Keeps Getting Worse: Obama Nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer..”. Of course, in any kind of open forum I know of, it is entirely on-topic and appropriate to post the question why CD was banning and blocking people who were trying to explain one year ago, that Obama was exactly the person he is turning out to be.
Well, I did this and within minutes, a reload of CD’s home page produced a blank white screen, stating simply “IP address ___.___.___.__ has been banned”, Of course, I simply reset the IP address and was surprised to find that SaboCat was still allowed in – until Monday morning, when SaboCat went on the banned list. Everything is done with complete opacity – no explanations for bannings are ever given.
Mind you, ther is planty of off-topic, personal attacks and other stuff that could legitimately be banned, but the banning are always due certain “banned” topics – Ralph Nader, Obama never was a “progressive and never will be and posts that cross a certain, secret, arbitrary line to the left of what Craig Brown wants discussed.
More than anything, banning and post deletion will occur if you mention that CD bans people. Anyone who mentions disappearances gets disappeared.
And explanations of bannings are never given. It’s totally opaque.
Do the much-more numerous right-wing web sites do this – ban people who are too far to the right? I doubt it.
The US “progressive” community is full of the likes of rich-bourgeois liberals like Craig Brown who think their money buys them influence over others – I have a bunch like him in my local “Peace and Justice Center”.
I think you hit the nail right on the head about the cause of this problem. Quite simply many Leftists are just as subject to acting like typical small business owners with THEIR websites as any other group of people are. Craig Brown (commondreams) is like Louis Proyect (marxism list) is like Michael Albert (Znet) is like the many local ‘Peace and Justice Center’ franchise operators. At best it is bureaucracy in a tea cup, so to speak. But usually it a some ‘BOSS” or other simply dictating.
True somebody has to make decisions on these sites, but it is clear that many that bottleneck these sites with their ownerships do not always act that responsibly.
I blogged under tailcap and Ric Abreu, maybe you read one of my anti-Obama rants. For a full year prior to the election I blasted Obama from the left. Shortly after the election they banned me. I couldn’t even access the site let alone post. Then when they had a fund raiser they unbanned me.
I felt leery of their censorship but continued to post anti-Obama commentaries. Then one night while blasting Obama for one thing or another I had a CD administrator actually come online and insult me in a post that was later removed. I returned the favor, insulted the CD censor and asked him why he didn’t just ban me because I wasn’t on the Obama bangwagon. Within minutes I was banned. Screw CD and the Democrats they stand for.
Lastly, if you Google Craig Brown you will see he doesn’t believe in 3rd parties and stupidly thinks Democrats are the answer when in reality they are the problem.
To be fair, I don’t thingk Michael Albert has ever banned anyone from Znet just for petty disagreements like Craig Brown does.
It is interesting that some are are reporting getting “unbanned”. and some are also reporting administrators entering discussions. All my bannings have been permanent an no reasons have ever been given.
Yes, nothing at all has changed at the CommonLiberalCrap website. I just posted a comment about the site´s celebration of the antiIranian government demonstrations in time of US focusing on starting war against that country yesterday and it was removed. Today, I posted the most toned down comment on the same thread with the same censorship being applied.
I don´t think that these phonies are sincere liberal people celebrating a supposed outbreak of Iranian democratic resistance to the Islamic Government there. These are 2-faced Democratic Party tied American twits.
TWO COMMENTS censored on this thead… ´The Iranian Uprising is Home Grown, and Must Stay That Way´by Stephen Zunes
Ask the CD censors WHY? They don´t have any decent answer. They just don´t like it when their political viewpoint receives legitimate criticism from the Left. The supposed ´discussion´ at their site is a joke!
I got an appeal from CD a few months ago for money and decided to see if I was still banned. I found to my surprise that they had unbanned me or something because I was able to create a new handle and post my comments. I blasted away at Obama, The Nation and the Democrats. I don’t think they appreciated that seeing as they are pro-Democrats.
Then a few days ago I read an article that included a YouTube video of Bernie Sanders telling Senators that their job was to look out for the interests of the people (single-payer) not the interests of the insurance companies.
I then posted a comment that said that Bernie had been found dead in a motel room with a prostitute and that drugs were found in the room but there was no suicide note next to his body which was found hanging in the bathroom.
While I realize this was a tasteless joke and that I shouldn’t have made it, I was just trying pointing out out that opposing the “powers that be” on a big money-making issue like healthcare could cause you to get killed.
Well, it got me banned for the third time. I think they were just looking for an excuse and finally found one with the Sanders comment. To be fair someone may have reported the comment.
That’s fine I have started blogging under Ric Tailcap at Alternet. And if they are pro-Democrat too I am sure I will eventually run afoul of them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason I got “unbanned” was that I changed my ISP a while back and perhaps I got a new IP address or whatever it is they use to track who you are. Therefore, perhaps once banned, always banned unless you change something on your computer so they don’t realize who you.
The Democratic Party sheep are a rather humorless lot when you get down to it, Ric. You kinda were tempting fate there. …lol…
I feel like home now…:)
I just wanted to add my name to the list of the disappeared on CD. My screen name was Skip_Townes, and some of you who still post there know who I am and largely where my politics are.
Yesterday, someone named Jason psoted on a thread about progressive media by Naomi Klein (which was really an advert for The Progressive mag, another Dem front) asking about his queries about how CD uses it’s donations.
I responded to him thinking it was no biggie because it’s not like they’re running ads for the bling, which they could and still remain a non-prof. In short, a mild defense of CD.
Today, that whole thread is pulled. And I go in there and see someone complaining about why threads are being pulled right and left (so to speak) and *as I’m writing a response to that post* HIS thread is taken down, and my response doesn’t go up.
Now I’m pissed. So I write a bit of a screech that basically says “what the hell are you peple doing in here? This wasn’t off topic, it wasn’t an actual accusation, it was just a frigging question!”
Now I’m gone.
One of the posters above (pjd?) is back to posting over there.
This site is a fraud, and must be taken on. I feel terribly about not having noticed it earlier, but I had a hard run in with Abby Zimet over a piece of crap blurb she put onthe sidebar about tobacco taxes rising and how happy she was about that. I hit her very hard, and within an hour that whole post–hers and mine–was taken off. Apparently she thought the better of her position.
Zimet is probably a huge problem here. She’s been ramming the Iranian angle down the readership throat for weeks. And she apparently cannot tolerate disagreement or transparency.
Any thoughts on how this bunch of Stalinist frauds can be hit back at? Everyone needs to know that mass supression of honest speech can’t poissibly be progressive.
Thanks guys, see you in the trenches.
POSTING COMMONDREAMS 280709
at http://notmytribe.wpcomstaging.com/2008/common-dreams-or-is-it-censorship-in-common-with-the-corporate-media-85540.html
Dear tom plotts – tnx 4 yr support,
I’m the poster banned on CommonDreams for writing:
“Wow. Commondreams just scrubbed at least 5 postings from this thread (the no. of “Comments” went down fm 82 to 77). The postings were critical of CD posting a Naomi Klein article-excerpt as a teaser for “The Progressive” at $14.97, presented under “Views”. The postings were removed without notification, explanation or possibility of appeal. Censorship without a trace. Watch out for this posting disappearing…”. – Which it did within two hours. Plus I found my nick banned from commenting further.
I saw tom plott’s later comment on the CD-thread referring to my disappeared comment referring to the disappeared earlier comments, also disappear. That’s real sanitizing. The tread was totally scrubbed for any overt or implied reference to the disappeared comments – which were all pretty polite and factual (my first comment even ended with a compliment to CD for running “an efficient and valuable” operation). One comment politely asked for a presentation of how CD spends donations, and a reply summed up that with $300K – 4 annual $75K donation-drives – CD probably stretches a shoe-string budget very far. Both were removed.
I have no problem with CD banning whatever they please, but silencing any comment or reference to the practice while not being transparent about the criteria behind it worries me a lot. People are being bumped off the site without warning or chance of understanding. Other posters in the “177,998 strong network” will not know about the censorship they’re supporting. That gets spooky.
While Craig Brown, Executive Director of CD, is entitled to handling his private website as he pleases, this practice of invisible censorship amounts to defrauding donors of their money donated in good faith, believing that their funds indeed support their “common dreams”. Silent censorship is most unlikely to be part of those “common dreams”. I myself was a donor until the first time I got banned. This banning I thought was a one-off, happening during CD’s changeover to a new web-platform – with posters critisizing some of the changes being banned – and soon after Craig Brown’s wife Lina Newshouser’s very highly publicized death (her obit appeared prominently on the CD masthead for months, as if Brown’s personal loss applied equally to all readers). At the time I thought Craig Brown was in an emotionally vulnerable state in the wake of his beloved wife’s death, and that the apparent overreaction with bans was due to this fragile state of emotions.
The fact that CD is donor-financed also moots the degree to which CD is a private website. If the donors were fully aware of the extent of the censoring-practices, the donations are likely to be drastically reduced (my donations being an example). That this might be a big reason for CD not revealing their practices openly, strengthens the argument that donors are being defrauded.
CD being a BIG progressive/radical/leftist website makes it all the more important that CD is open about how they run their operation, and under what criteria posters may be banned. Posters unwittingly breaking with these criteria should have access to appeal, at least in the form of acceptance by CD of apologies from posters going too far without realizing.
As it is, CD is inconsistent about the criticism allowed: criticism that CD allows – and indeed presents – about others is banned when directed at CD.
The banning I experienced yesterday baffled me. So I went on a websearch about “Craig Brown CommonDreams”. Under “Common Dreams NewsCenter” at Wikipedia I found this:
“Common Dreams users have also criticized the site for its practice of banning users of its reader-comment utility for no obvious violations of the posting rules, but rather for deviations to the left of certain politically moderate positions, or for any mention in that Common Dreams bans users. A “purge” of left-critics of Democratic party candidates occurred just before and after the November 2008 election. The comment deletions and bannings occur with no notice or explanation from the moderator. While a privately run web site is entitled to operate their site any way they wish, some have pointed out that such behavior seems to violate the spirit of the progressive ideology that it promotes.”
Following the links from the footnoted article “Progressives disappearing Progressives” I ended up here on this site, among fellow bannees.
My suggestion is that an article is solicited to be written for e.g. Alternet, in order to have the info of the CD banning-practices widely publicized and generally known about among progressives.
The best would be if such an article could convince CD/Craig Brown to be open, transparent and fair about their practices, with a recourse to explanation and appeal for banned posters. That would remove the current insecurity spreading among CD-commenters. (CD-posters: always retain a copy of your postings if you cherish them – without warning pithy postings can be disappeared.)
As one of the banned postings commented, it must take a LOT of time for CD-employees scanning the comment-threads of all articles for posts to remove as overly critical of CD or referring to the censorship-practice. That’s time the donors would mean to be paying CD for using for better purposes (I know my donations were meant to).
Meahwhile, never forget that CD actually is and continues to be an excellent news-digest site for progressives.
Ullern, thanks for the comments here. I’m still stunned a bit, and it felt like wading into the agitprop pit of the ISO for a few days. I’m just deeply disturbed at the level of principle that any progressive would just gleefuly yank other views and comments without either explanation or remorse.
CD is still a good clearing house, but you’re right: they must be devoting a ton of time just scrubbing the comments, and that’s a huge waste of resources. I mean, this was practically a real-time purge! On a weekend!:)
There are few popular liberal-left sites like CD. Their range of views is impressive, and on some issues their tolerance is very high (the Iranian brouhaha there for weeks being one example where they let a lot of fierce rhetoric fly even though they clearly had staked out a position).
But this question about money clearly seemed to trip a hair trigger, and in my opinion, that’s a red alert. And now I’m beginning to wonder about their real overhead and how much some of these buggers are pulling down for themselves. I do know it’s a problem on other sites, like Kos and to a lesser extent Alternet, where the evolution of what was once a site for agitation into a corporate business causes all sorts of havoc.
The problem these tactics have is that they merely encourage wild-ass speculation like the kind I just indulged in. And that’s bad ideologically, and it’s eqaully bad for business.
I just got one of their fundraising mailers, too, and promptly flagged it for ISP abuse for fun. A few of those and they’ll start finding their own inexplicable bans from ISPs (it’s a good way to get their attention, btw, since abuse reports can lead to a closing of the IP portal for even mass mailers).
I’m not very merciful about this kind of stuff. I’m a lefty precisely because I get bent over abuses of power against the vulnerable. And this needs to be dealt with and Brown and Co. need to be driven up from the serenity of their anonymous little hidey holes and engage people like grown ups.
Anyhoo, I like your idea re: an article. I might possibly have an idea, and if you guys are game, I’ll consider working on one if I can get support for sufficient anecdotal evidence and research in order to get an approval. It’s a longshot, though, because these sites are largely fraternities. But it should be attempted.
Be well, friends. And thanks.
This email has today been sent to CommonDreams, in reply to an donation-seeking email from them July 28th titled (fairly ironically) “In a FOX News Orwellian world . . .”:
*
Dear CommonDreams,
You have unexpectedly and without cause mentioned anywhere removed my latest comment-postings and banned my nick (while still asking for my donations).
In order to make such removal of postings and banning predictable and comprehensive to posters, please add to your “Comment Policy” the following bullet-point or similar under “We may delete any comment that contains:”:
“Mentioning of CommonDreams, our policies or practices.”
That would make the removal of postings commenting upon CommonDreams covered by the criteria. We posters would then be warned beforehand of the possibility for such deletions. Failing to include this criterion, on the other hand, amounts to being – in your own expression – “Orwellian”.
Be fair, be transparent. Thanks.
Awaiting your reply.
Respectfully yours
Ullern
*
If there is a response to this email or the suggestion I’ll report it here.
I was also banned by Common Dreams… without explanation.
Who is the bitter webmaster working there and when will someone with an audience like Chris Hedges or Glen Greenwald write about it?
This will eventually happen, I am sure of it. It may actually be quite embarrassing for some of the favored intellectual academics that always get published at Common Dreams to find out about how the site censures people routinely even when they are expressing Left of Center views. Sooner or later, the site will reach a critical mass of having censured so many folk and having taken them offline, that it will rebound against CD itself. In fact, I think that enough people have already found out about this to have stained the rep of common Dreams even now.
To be fair, today this email arrived fm CommonDreams, re the above posted reply to their email calling for donations called “In a FOX News Orwellian world . . .”:
Read Receipt: Re: In a FOX News Orwellian world . . .
The following message was read on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 5:21pm:
From: ullernxxxx@yahoxxxx
To: commondreams@mail.democracyinaction.org
Subject: Re: In a FOX News Orwellian world . . .
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 1:04am
Well, I’ll be blessed, I guessed. – Swift reply there, CD! Only a month to confirm reception.
Dutifully reporting it here, as promised.
My account is still blocked, though. My email about it fm July 29 didn’t help. No appeal nor amnesty in their Common Dreams…
And nothing added on CommonDreams’ “comment policy”. Apparently they don’t want people to be suitably warned.
Hey, an idea: I’ll try that and see! Maybe a donation will do the trick? – That’ll be a fun way of spending a couple of $: check out if CommonDreams are open to small bribes!
(Tried. Their “processor” wouldn’t accept my “State”. I wrote “Annoyed”.)
Still waiting for an article about the sanitation of unwittingly unpopular comments on CD to appear somewhere. Alternet didn’t follow up on the suggestion I sent them.
Hope you’re right, Tony Logan, that an undercurrent of awareness of the censorship at CD is about to break to the surface.
Meanwhile, I realize CD is after all quite consistent – with the double-standards of the Democrats.
I got censored & banned from Common Dreams again last night. I complained that Obama’s foreign policy in the Mideast is looking like a third term of Bush. Whether it’s bailouts to big bankers, failure to put single-payer on the table, etc. I posed the question of whether the editorial staff were happy with Obama, or naively disappointed (and we’re supposed to believe they didn’t see this coming). For this, I was banned. Sad thing is that I’ve posted political banter in all kinds of forums, my local newspaper, other blogs, etc. and never been censored. CommonDreams is the most heavy-handed of them all. I imagine they’d like to rewrite history if possible.
Yes, it is sad. But often times the worst censors are the supposed liberals. And even worse, often times the worst censors are even more the supposed marxists.
I just wanted to share with you that I was also blocked/censored by commondreams recently (in January 2010). My crime? Not supporting Obama’s health bill. And stating that commondreams was complicit in not having single payer healthcare being discussed. I know, they talked about it more recently but back when it would have mattered (a year ago) all the articles were ‘support the public option.’
Kind of like how they had all the Nader articles recently, but not when the presidential race was going on. Then it was marginalize Nader, Kucinich, and not even mention Gravel or McKinney.
In short, commondreams oppresses any dissent for the purpose of pushing the democratic/corporate positions to the forefront.
I have to admit it was discouraging, though fairly obvious during the democratic presidential election when there was this blind support of Obama and Hillary, but very little talk of any other candidate. Yes, a few crumbs, but easily overwhelmed by the pro democratic party leadership stance.
I haven’t gone back to the site since.
so it goes,
Attila Gyenis
http://www.NotOneMore.US – The Pledge for Peace and Justice
Exactly the same experience more recently. CD is clearly a Corporate Fascist Imperialist “Democrat” kind of site masquerading under “Progressive”.
This is not the only instance one has run into–some very anti-Marxist groups have expropriated the name “Progressive” for what is essentially the same old Right Wing Democrat Party.
How about just mentioning that the IMF is a shell game–banned.
Marcuse would immediately understand this type of cooptation.
Comical really. Today is November 3 and the elections were held yesterday. So today Common Dreams has once again booted me offline after months of allowing me to comment on their site.
The Democrats that run the site get real touchy when their party goes down like a lead balloon like they just did last night. Never mind that I have even contributed financially every three months to keep the site up and running. It has actually become a site where Leftists to the Left of the Democrats come to make their POV known and to advocate for better than that.
This election seems to have broken their hearts though, and any criticism of the strategy of ‘lesser of two evil’ voting may cause the ‘moderators’ to leap out with their familiar censorship once again. It did with me. Bad habits are rather hard to break for some and I find liberal Democrats to be some of the worst and most consistent censors around. Especially when just beat up bad…
After letting me back on their site under another e-name, I was able to post again for about one week that way. But another comment about how supporting Democrats only gets you Republican proposals, this time talking about how the Obama appointed National Deficit Commission’s attack on Social Security was an example of that, got me prohibited now from even viewing their web site at all, on this computer.
Here is their message to me…
‘Sorry, 97.112.144.107 has been banned.’
Well sorry they are indeed. One can’t criticize the Democrats anywhere without their partisans swiping back at you. That’s a pretty simple rule of thumb… Now I’ll have to tear up my credit card and get another one from the bank, because they were getting $10 every three months automatically from me to help pay for the web site band width that CD uses. No more.
Looks like I made the “doghouse” too. All I get is 403.
You and I were part of the after election purge of non Democratic Party addicted Leftists there, Aesops Dog.
The thing about Craig Brown is that he is still peeved that his neighbor, Eliot Cutler lost to Paul Lepage. Secondly is the Wind Power/RGGI fraud and his undying support of First Wind and Angus Kings’ wind powered efforts. There are some very serious matters that need to be looked into, possibly RICO. Mr. Brown has donated to certain campaigns and is connected with individuals who have used their political office for monetary gains. Not that it is a perfect world but what happened in Maine is outrageous starting with Enron back in 97-01.
Craig Brown and his now deceased wife have been of a great service to the US Left by making CD available, but unfortunately Brown’s background is thoroughly Democratic Party oriented and to that mindset he is tied down to. If you don’t agree with lesser of two evil Democrats they will kick you again and again, and kick you hard. They certainly will kick people off their discussion boards!
The US Left to grow, now needs something much better and way beyond what we now have in the small range of websites people can visit. As of now, the only major website that is not pretty much tied down with ‘lesser of two evil’ pushing of the Democratic Party is Counterpunch, and they have no forum for discussion set up on that site. Neither does the Left Social Democratic crowd (though they fancy themselves as ‘Left libertarians’ over at Znet.
After a year of _relative quiet_ CD us up to possibly the worst shennanigans to date. Perhaps it is jsut a technical glitch, but they may be getting rid of the comment utility altogether now…
After a year of commenting actively on the Common Dreams website, I was just banned from the site after posting a comment asking the CD online community to join a Google discussion group to talk about the current changes that are being implemented on the site. I posted my comment after first trying to find out what was going on from the editors–who did not respond to my inquiries. Colleagues of mine also tried to contact the CD editors, and they, too, received no reply.
Like everyone else here, after my log-on name was banned, I sent several emails to the editors and the “webmaster” of CD requesting to be reinstated or receive some explanation for my ban–and received no reply at all.
I suspect that the underlying reason for my being banned is that I have consistently offered detailed criticisms of the articles by Democratic Party apologists that frequently appear on CD. This would be consistent with the pattern of past bannings and censorship at the site.
I am interested in finding out more about Common Dreams and censorship.
I would like to be able to contact the primary commenters on the site to get feedback and information about their experiences there. Does anyone have a good idea about how to do that?
Also, I have done some research about Common Dreams, and I certainly know about Craig Brown’s longstanding ties to the Democratic Party–including his work on the presidential campaign of the crooked former Senator from California, Democrat Alan Cranston (one of the infamous “Keating Five.”) It is telling that Mr. Brown fails to include his work for Alan Cranston in his biography on the site.
Also, I know that the Common Dreams News Center was co-founded by Todd Gitlin, a very compromised professor at NYU. I would like more detail about the initial formation of Common Dreams, who the key decision makers were in the past, and who they are now.
I would also like to get more information about who funds Common Dreams, and how the funds collected online are used. Do they get other funds from elsewhere? Also, what are their financial connections to the Democratic Party, if any?
Regarding the current changes at Common Dreams, it appears that they may be planning the following:
1) a reduction in comment size from 1,000 words to 1,000 CHARACTERS (approximately 150-200 words). This would represent a reduction of 80-90% in comment length, and would eliminate everything but remarks that focus on one detail only, or remarks that are highly general and/or superficial;
2) Elimination of the “search this site” feature, which would make the site very inconvenient for research;
3) A move toward encouraging reactions such as Facebook “likes” rather than substantive comments–noting the fact that Facebook does not allow “don’t likes”;
4) A move towards more severe censorship of comments on the site coupled with re-writing the web history to remove evidence of this censorship–George Orwell would be impressed by the dictatorial audacity of this.
I think these software changes and censorship issues are very serious matters. As far as I’m concerned, the members of the fake left like the Common Dreams editors do far greater damage to progressive organizing than the right wing does–because they pretend to be working for the people when they are really working for the corporate world and the neo-liberal right wing Democratic Party.
I think it is time for a concerted effort to discourage people from contributing money to Common Dreams, and to discourage truly progressive writers from having their work published there.
If the people of Egypt got rid of their dictator, maybe it’s time for us to wake up and start asking questions about our situation in the U.S., too. And a good place to begin is with those who claim to be fighting injustice when they are actually helping to promote it through their own practices and policies.
Visiting Professor – I have regularly read and appreciated your comments on CD.
Tnx for yr info on CD posted here.
I’ve been posting on CD as et al “Ullern” and “Smarter”, both now banned and blocked for commenting on CD’s comment-deletion policies.
The latest banning resulted from a reply (!) to a comment on bannings, where I mentioned the 2008-purge. Such mentioning seems a definite Orwellian no-no on CD now.
I agree with your comments and anxieties re CD. It’s fairly arbitrary what they allow and not, of comments and topics or not. That’s a nuisance, as what’s allowed one day apparently may be banned another day. No predictability – total political and personal whim by CD.
The sanitation of the history of banning users from the CommonDreams-site, by deleting any reference or signs of it, of course amounts to defrauding donors of their money on false premises and promises.
I still maintain that CD is a good article clearing-site. Only it would be so much better with transparency about its history and banning-policies.
Even the Wikipedia-entry for “CommonDreams News Center” regularly gets “cleaned up”, blanded down and scrubbed of facts about the banning-controversy. But at least for now a ref and link to this blog remains.
You can reach me at ullern@yahoo.co.uk . I’d work with you to get the CD-policies out in the open, as I believe that would improve the site for all concerned. Even for Craig Brown.
CD can ban all they like, in my view, as long as they remain transparent and predictable about it – which at the present time they’re not. Also, there should be recourse to appeal on ban, or time-limits. I.e. there should be «fair warning» re permanent bans.
My personal solution, as I continue to value getting info from CD – even the biased sort they select – is to refrain from commenting on CD or their policies there at all. That’s a huge loss, of course, to the CD-“community”. Like moving forwards with blinders as on a horse. Which means some of the reader-community’s conduct cannot be improved. E.g. how properly to relate to authority mixed with technology. This is an issue of increasing importance in the Western world, and to us of the «internet-rich» – the currently approx. 1.5 billion out of 7 billion people in the world with intellectual and economic means to access the internet.
My personal reaction to the CD-censorship also means I direct my energies elsewhere than posting comments on CommonDreams.org. Which is sad, as they do have a lively and well educated community of readers and posters, with important exchanges happening online that could be a much stronger force for good without the conceiled censorship. But such is the state of our “common dreams” – at CD as elsewhere.