Personal announcement: New moderation policy plan adopted

Dear friends,

The following comments moderation policy has now been adopted:

1.  Comments must contribute to the interest of a thread, a post or of the blog.  Just venting or totally inane comments will not be allowed.
2.  Comments must be respectful. Criticisms are welcome, but they must be fact based on logically outlined.  Name calling does not qualify.
3.  Off-topic comments are allowed, but have to offer something of interest to the readers. For example the recent posts about MoA are of interests to many, even if off-topic, thus they should stay.

The main intention for me is not to censor any form of speech, but to make it interesting and enjoyable for people to read the comments and participate in an intelligent exchange of ideas.

Now I need to tackle a more complex issue: racist comments.

I must begin by stating what I subjectively consider to be racist for the purpose of this blog:

1) the idea that humans differ from each other in essence.
2) the idea that your genetic makeup restricts your freedom of choice.
3) the expression of irrational hostility to an ethnic group or race.
4) the denial that all humans are equally precious to God or that some humans deserve a special status not granted to others.

And, just to clarify, here are a few examples of what I do not consider racism:

1) Criticisms of religions, tribes or ideologies because a person has to make a choice to belong to a religion, tribe or a political movement.  Thus it is absolutely legitimate to criticize Judaism, the Jewish tribal identity or Zionism.  It is, however, not legitimate to criticize somebody born Jewish just for that fact.  Nobody chooses his/her ethnicity.
2) The opinion that races are different in certain aspects; saying that Blacks have a lower IQ then Whites is a hypothesis which must be proved or disproved based on facts.  Facts, whatever they are, are neither racists nor non-racist.  They just are.
3) It is not racist to state that one is of the opinion that Italians and Greeks tend to be louder than Norwegians, it is not racism to state that Hungarians are taller than the Japanese or that Argentinians are more musical than Iraqis.  In all these cases what is being asserted is that races, nations, ethnicities are different in some aspects, but not in essence.
4) It is not racist to say that the gas chambers were never used to kill Jews, that Stalin was about to attack Germany when Hitler preempted him with his own attack, or that the Turks never committed a genocide of Armenians.  These are historical topics which should be freely investigated and either affirmed or disproved, not censored.

(Just for the record and to be clear: I endorse none of the examples I have given above to illustrate my point)

In other words, there are race or ethnicity related opinions which can be controversial or which some of us mind find offensive, but which still are part of the realm of legitimate speculation and investigation. 

For the purpose of this blog I will try to stick to a narrow definition of racism because I do want to avoid censorship of ideas as much as possible.

Frankly, I will try to use common sense first and foremost.  I think that for 99.9% of you this should make no difference at all.  But a few trolls, freaks or paid provocateurs will now be shown to the door.

Many thanks and kind regards,

The Saker