Erm… maybe not that kind of exposing yourself.
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The truth hurts doesn’t it?
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The story goes that Haya knows some ugly facts about the kidnapping of Sheikh Mo’s wayward daughter Latifa, who was kidnapped back to Dubai last year.
Kim Dotcom, among others, has been tweeting about this: https://mobile.twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1144755826038415361
Sheikh Mo is not a man who likes to lose. We all know that.
The BBC via Frank Gardner (Mi6’s man at the Beeb) is reporting the same: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-48843168
(Be aware that when Frank Gardner speaks or writes, he is almost always lying. Not sure what to make of this. He must be involved in order to keep a smooth diplomatic face on ugly dealings with one of the UK’s major weapons clients.)
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NYTimes story today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/world/middleeast/princess-haya-sheikh-mohammed-bin.html
Here’s an update on Latifa:
https://news.yahoo.com/princess-latifa-asked-guards-shoot-090152402.html
[h=1]Princess Latifa asked guards to shoot her rather than return her to Dubai during her doomed attempt to flee the royal family, according to the friend who fled with her[/h]
October 2, 2019,
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I can only imagine what she went though there to rather be shot than return.
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Random… why did VineyRidge get banned? Just noticed that a few posts up.
I think that happened on one of the safe sport threads or George Morris. It’s been 4-5 months either way.
P.
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She was saying how having sex with children was fine, in fact, they like it! Not something we need on here.
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I am floored.
Viney has been on this forum 19+ years. It’s kind of like some of the SafeSport sanctions of people one would never have guessed to be capable of that.
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Like some of the SafeSport violators, they had said a number of really inappropriate things over the years and gotten away with it, it just didn’t catch up with them until now.
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Absolutely.
We’ve had a major cultural shift in the matter of just a little over a year. Finally there is recognition instead of denial.
And it is certainly shocking for people who were not in the tiny circle of ‘those who knew’.
It’s no longer a secret to keep. Thankfully.
There might even be some sort of existential parallel with the thread topic. Secrets are no longer something to dedicate a lifetime to covering up.
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Is having an unpopular opinion a reason to ban someone on this forum?
I had a problem with a now-banned member a few years ago in which that member’s entity (this member had a variety of personas to cheerlead herself) was making defamatory statements about me. I alerted mods and anyone else I could reach at COTH and… they did nothing. From a legal standpoint, a forum publisher isn’t liable for opinions expressed on their forum but the forum is liable for defamatory statements made therein. So the response surprised me.
When I presented evidence of this member’s sock puppetry, the member was banned. But it bothered me that the defamatory statements were of no concern. The upshot is I rarely post here anymore.
I’m not familiar with the details of the vineyridge incident so I can’t speak to specifics other than what I see here. But over the years, we’ve had people on here justifying riding without helmets or drugging horses or selling on scary unsuitable horses or various repugnant behaviors of trainers and luminaries. So it’s news to me that one can’t express an unpopular opinion here.
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This was , I believe, a “last straw” type of situation.
I also believe that excusing pedophilia equates to more than an “unpopular opinion”. 
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So you think somebody posting on COTH that having sex with children is okay is erm, okay? I’d say that that post was less than “unpopular”. Added on to some horribly racist comments in the off topic forum I’m not surprised at the banning.
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Today I learned that JER has created a moral equivalency between raping children and riding without a helmet.
Tell us more. This is fascinating.
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I thought JER’s point was that you don’t just get banned for a difference of opinion, which explains why the helmet people were not banned while the pedophile and white supremacy apologist was. But I guess it goes to show you how unclear posts on the internet can be.
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"
I’m not familiar with the details of the vineyridge incident so I can’t speak to specifics other than what I see here. But over the years, we’ve had people on here justifying riding without helmets or drugging horses or selling on scary unsuitable horses or various repugnant behaviors of trainers and luminaries. So it’s news to me that one can’t express an unpopular opinion here."
If you’re not familiar with the details, maybe you should either investigate them, or be quiet. The above paragraph is astonishing to anyone with even a cursory understanding of how Viney viewed child molesters as NBD.
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Wow.
I’m speaking out in support of free expression. I will always do that. Feel free to express otherwise.
I can point to a number of members here who’ve expressed the opinion that those who are raped are often dressed or acting like ‘they’re asking for it’. Or that those involved in MeToo-type revelations were usually unattractive. I’ve seen people make various racist and homophobic statements. All of these points of view - which have been tolerated at various levels over time due to topical and cultural values - have been freely expressed and discussed.
Some opinions are less legal than others. For example, horse drugging is illegal but we had an actual horse drugger-killer (at a show!) on here vehemently defending herself. Statuatory rape is illegal (although the statutes vary and have varied greatly over the years - and this is in the USA where legal child marriage is still an actual ongoing problem) but it is entirely possible that one could disagree with the way in which it’s treated by the law or by cultural mores. This may not be a popular opinion but as long as the person expressing the opinion isn’t actually engaging in an illegal act, it’s an opinion.
Again, I don’t know the specifics of the incident. I’m expressing my surprise at the lack of tolerance for - as it appears to me - for the expression of an unpopular opinion given what else I’ve seen on here over the years, including tolerance for defamatory statements against me.
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Vineyridge’s comments have nothing to do with what happened to you. a tiff between adults is very, very different than advocating sex between a very, very young person and a trainer more than twice his or her age.
For what it’s worth, the guy who came on COTH wanting to have sex with our horses was banned too, and later turned out to be a real person who is now in jail.
Perhaps since you didn’t see the comments and don’t know the specifics, you should refrain from speculation about whether the mods’ decision was just in viney’s case.
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