I posted an attack on the site owner in GD for being a capricious admin and got myself banned.

Hey Cassandra,

-FUCK YOU-

The mere FACT OF OUR EXISTENCE over here at PopIndy demonstrates that your most troublesome posters from days gone by can and do get along when meddling from megalomaniacal folks like yourself is not acting as a provocation every fucking step of the way.

Even sweetheart defended me...that's just how fucked up you are.

Cheers,

Rusty

There is no excuse for limiting participation.

There is no excuse for breaking communication lines.

There is no excuse for isolating and banishing people.

Limiting participation, breaking communication lines, and isolating and banishing individuals supports tyranny and cripples people's ability to resist tyranny.

This is precisely how PI operates to suppress any and all serious opposition to those in power. If those three things can be accomplished, there is no need to do anything else to destroy the Left. "Radical" ideas, various counter-cultural causes, Leftist sounding rhetoric, and "free" personal expression can all be tolerated by those in power without any risk, providing that those three threats and the power to carry them out are in place.

I posted an attack on the site owner in GD for being a capricious admin and got myself banned.

Hey Cassandra,

-FUCK YOU-

The mere FACT OF OUR EXISTENCE over here at PopIndy demonstrates that your most troublesome posters from days gone by can and do get along when meddling from megalomaniacal folks like yourself is not acting as a provocation every fucking step of the way.

Even sweetheart defended me...that's just how fucked up you are.

Cheers,

Rusty

Time to build a new website... serious, hard-edged, relentless...
.

Time to build a new website... serious, hard-edged, relentless...
.

Hear, hear.

Time to build a new website... serious, hard-edged, relentless...
.

Hear, hear.

I'd like to see you implement some of the new threads earlier discussed. And the post you made about making pages, yeah we are in total and complete agreement on that. Let's try to move forward with that, however haphazardly it may be early on.

I'd like to see you implement some of the new threads earlier discussed. And the post you made about making pages, yeah we are in total and complete agreement on that. Let's try to move forward with that, however haphazardly it may be early on.

I have been at working away on that behind the scenes, checking out hundreds of activist sites, analyzing the functionality and usability of those sites, looking at their traffic, test driving and evaluating software and talking to programmers. A picture is emerging as to what is needed out there, what is possible, and what can be done with the Internet that isn't being done and what is needed in the way of software to make it happen.

And now for a brief message from our sponsors -

Who am I?

I was born to one of the wealthy families in El Salvador, with extensive ties to right wing and paramilitary groups and leaders throughout Latin America. My mother was in the US when I was born, so I have dual citizenship. In 1980 my family was forced to flee El Salvador. As a young man, I supported and worked for a number of right wing causes and politicians in the US. After high school, I spent 6 years in special forces in the military. When I came back I went to college, and then was recruited by the CIA. After 6 months training, I hired on to the Howard Dean campaign. From there, I launched an amazingly ambitious and surprisingly successful Internet project to attract and trap liberal bloggers and soon became a spokesperson for the entire Left on national media outlets. The Internet project is cleverly set up to draw people in, and then to control and steer the direction of any subsequent discussion by systematic banishment of any who stay outside of certain lines. As a respected liberal spokesperson, I am in a position to define and promote a tepid watered down and extremely limited, predictable and vulnerable version of the Left and ridicule and destroy critics and radicals.

Who am I?

We now return to our regular program...

Peripherally related - anyone here still have access to DU? There is a guy there, OmahaSteve, who day after day after day posts the news from the labor front, and never gets any responses. I'd like to talk to him.

“Measure twice, cut once.” I am in no big hurry to make major changes to the site, but stand willing and able. I had hoped for some brainstorming, and also I know from experience running other sites that if you take unilateral initiative, that tends to preclude rather than encourage participation in developing the site – it becomes “Skinner's site” or “Tinoire's site” in a big hurry.

At the same time, “if it ain't broke don't fix it," and anaxarchos opened my eyes when he said “maybe this is the way it is supposed to be happening” or words to that effect. For there only being a few of us, the work that is going on is already stellar and I figured that it would become obvious when it was time to gear up for the next phase. So I have been throwing ideas out there as possibilities for the future, and the future could be any time including now.

While I have come to appreciate quality over quantity in the membership, and sometimes wonder if the two are mutually exclusive, I do feel that we are trying to cover a one hundred mile front with 5 or 6 pickets.

Who am I?

I was born to one of the wealthy families in El Salvador, with extensive ties to right wing and paramilitary groups and leaders throughout Latin America. My mother was in the US when I was born, so I have dual citizenship. In 1980 my family was forced to flee El Salvador. As a young man, I supported and worked for a number of right wing causes and politicians in the US. After high school, I spent 6 years in special forces in the military. When I came back I went to college, and then was recruited by the CIA. After 6 months training, I hired on to the Howard Dean campaign. From there, I launched an amazingly ambitious and surprisingly successful Internet project to attract and trap liberal bloggers and soon became a spokesperson for the entire Left on national media outlets. The Internet project is cleverly set up to draw people in, and then to control and steer the direction of any subsequent discussion by systematic banishment of any who stay outside of certain lines. As a respected liberal spokesperson, I am in a position to define and promote a tepid watered down and extremely limited, predictable and vulnerable version of the Left and ridicule and destroy critics and radicals.

Who am I?

Are you for real on all that? I always thought the guy was too stupid to really be much of a "mastermind" behind the scenes. I mean, read his articles, they pretty much suck..

Are you for real on all that? I always thought the guy was too stupid to really be much of a "mastermind" behind the scenes.

"Useful tool" not "mastermind."


I mean, read his articles, they pretty much suck.

What would you expect? They are written by a committee at a think tank, and designed to make the Left look weak.

I'd like to see you implement some of the new threads earlier discussed. And the post you made about making pages, yeah we are in total and complete agreement on that. Let's try to move forward with that, however haphazardly it may be early on.

I have been at working away on that behind the scenes, checking out hundreds of activist sites, analyzing the functionality and usability of those sites, looking at their traffic, test driving and evaluating software and talking to programmers. A picture is emerging as to what is needed out there, what is possible, and what can be done with the Internet that isn't being done and what is needed in the way of software to make it happen.

And now for a brief message from our sponsors -

Who am I?

I was born to one of the wealthy families in El Salvador, with extensive ties to right wing and paramilitary groups and leaders throughout Latin America. My mother was in the US when I was born, so I have dual citizenship. In 1980 my family was forced to flee El Salvador. As a young man, I supported and worked for a number of right wing causes and politicians in the US. After high school, I spent 6 years in special forces in the military. When I came back I went to college, and then was recruited by the CIA. After 6 months training, I hired on to the Howard Dean campaign. From there, I launched an amazingly ambitious and surprisingly successful Internet project to attract and trap liberal bloggers and soon became a spokesperson for the entire Left on national media outlets. The Internet project is cleverly set up to draw people in, and then to control and steer the direction of any subsequent discussion by systematic banishment of any who stay outside of certain lines. As a respected liberal spokesperson, I am in a position to define and promote a tepid watered down and extremely limited, predictable and vulnerable version of the Left and ridicule and destroy critics and radicals.

Who am I?

We now return to our regular program...

Peripherally related - anyone here still have access to DU? There is a guy there, OmahaSteve, who day after day after day posts the news from the labor front, and never gets any responses. I'd like to talk to him.

“Measure twice, cut once.” I am in no big hurry to make major changes to the site, but stand willing and able. I had hoped for some brainstorming, and also I know from experience running other sites that if you take unilateral initiative, that tends to preclude rather than encourage participation in developing the site – it becomes “Skinner's site” or “Tinoire's site” in a big hurry.

At the same time, “if it ain't broke don't fix it," and anaxarchos opened my eyes when he said “maybe this is the way it is supposed to be happening” or words to that effect. For there only being a few of us, the work that is going on is already stellar and I figured that it would become obvious when it was time to gear up for the next phase. So I have been throwing ideas out there as possibilities for the future, and the future could be any time including now.

While I have come to appreciate quality over quantity in the membership, and sometimes wonder if the two are mutually exclusive, I do feel that we are trying to cover a one hundred mile front with 5 or 6 pickets.

On the Who am I question, I give. Who?

I was just musing on the phenomenon we concern ourselves with here in contemplating a new way of constructing the site and discussion. We worry about thinkings sinking into obscurity. No doubt Tinoire can't wait for Chlamor's posts to go the way of yours, wolf's, anax's...

The Who? is Kos. Hes a real dick.

The Who? is Kos. Hes a real dick.

tres interessent!

On the Who am I question, I give. Who?

Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga.

This is as originally reported by Francis L. Holland, one of a group of Black bloggers who have been complaining for a while now about the systematic exclusion and banning and mistreatment of Black writers and points of view at Kos, DU and other sites.


I am amazed at the number of people at DailyKos and MyLeftWing who acknowledge having personally been an undercover agent or having known others, in the past and/or present, who are undercover agents. This is, perhaps, another example of what distinguishes Blacks from whites in America. Blacks normally do not have any personal friends who are infiltrating organizations on behalf of the CIA. If we know people like that, we do not associated with them because we do not and NEVER WOULD OR COULD trust them.

<snip>

Think about it! Black people have a history of radical politics -- from abolition to Malcolm X to the Black Panther Party. What better way to make the Democratic Party LESS radical AND less potent, then by severing it from its most politically radical component - Black people?

The two percent Black membership of DailyKos is not an accident. It is part of a conscious strategy to fracture the Left, neuter the Democratic Party, and frustrate truly radical efforts for change."

So he worked in the CIA right up until Deans campaign took off. His website, btw, had ALREADY taken off long before Deans campaign did. Meaning he set up the Daily Kos while he was with the CIA. I was there when Deans campaign got going and the Daily Kos was about as anti-Dean a crowd to run with as you could find. Markos didn't do much to support Dean on his website. Kinda strange if you ask me. Well, maybe not when you consider how the place has been run from day one.

<snip>

Markos is an ex-Republican who professes to be a libertarian who set up his website to be a Democratic Party only website and who worked and possibly still does work for the CIA. What effect has the Daily Kos had on the political scene?

First off the site forbids any diaries that can be considered "conspiracy theory". A rather broad definition the effect of which is to shut down any talk of 9-11 and even other potentially explosive topics.

The site is about electing Democrats only. It's about maintaining the status quo. In 2004 that meant they were behind Kerry and Dean supporters were snubbed without mercy. It's Dems first, what the candidate stands for second. Is it any wonder, therefore, that people like Webb who got elected because of DKos support, then turn around and pass the new FISA bill? Progressives get spat on if they try to primary a centrist Democrat. The tide is turning against the DLC, but Daily Kos only hinders that tide with its Democrat first policy.

<snip>

An ex-Republican, left-leaning libertarian calls the CIA "liberal"? It's like finding that piece of the jigsaw puzzle that snaps into place and then everything else suddenly makes perfect sense. Of course DKOS is drying up the blogosphere of writers. Of course frontpagers like Miss Laura are defending Hillary Clinton with polls from Fox News. Of course they rip into anyone who says Nader was right about Dems and Repugs being identical. Of course they're Dem first, progressives, well, if you don't vote Dem you'll get a Repug. Beware the boogey Repug man! Of course they were all about Kerry and putting down Dean despite the fact that Kos alleges it was the Dean campaign that made him not join the CIA.


The Indictment of Markos Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA by Justice and History (http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007/07/indictment-of-markos-alberto-moulitsas.html)

The Truth About Kos (http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/)

"Some people value their membership in a particular blog more than they value their freedom and their Constitutional rights. I hope I can never be suspected of being one of those people." -- Francis L. Holland

Interesting thread at Concepetual Guerilla about Kos, bannings and censorship:


Here’s the bottom line -- the realization I had as a result of this. There is nothing particularly important or useful going on there -- other than assembling a group of leftwing lemmings, only distinguishable from the lemmings over at Little Green Footballs by the pitch of the dog whistle they respond to. There are “activists” exactly to the extent that they can be motivated by those dog whistles to “make noise” in response to the stimulus. Don't get me wrong, there are some original and interesting individuals around, but they mostly fail to connect with the community as a whole. Meanwhile, original and interesting writers at other places are dying out.

<snip>

This particular rant brought me into contact with the "peanut gallery" over there. It's an interesting dichotomy. The writers - both the front pagers and the popular diarists -- are generally very good. But they aren't really the audience -- something I never really understood until this episode. I thought I was talking to guys like you -- large numbers of whom were invisible to me.

But that's not really the case. The writers over there are also thinkers. But the consumers are not really. They react -- which is why "pushing their buttons" is what works. Which makes it difficult for a guy like me. My whole program -- everything I do -- is about getting people to think outside the box.

Something I don't tell many people, but since it's come up, I find doctrinaire liberals to be almost as obnoxious as doctrinaire conservatives. Doctrinaire people -- regardless of ideology -- are extremely difficult to break out of established modes of thinking. I spend my energy working on the other side. But perhaps I need, as you say, to do engage in some constructive debate on our side.

Fuck Daily Kos! (http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/635)


Kos in his own words about the CIA:


This is a very liberal institution. And in a lot of ways, it really does attract people who want to make a better, you know, want to make the world a better place…. Of course, they’ve got their Dirty Ops and this and that, right but as an institution itself the CIA is really interested in stable world. That’s what they’re interested in. And stable worlds aren’t created by destabilizing regimes and creating wars…. I don’t think it’s a very partisan thing to want a stable world. And even if you’re protecting American interests, I mean that can get ugly at times, but generally speaking I think their hearts in the right place. As an organization their heart is in the right place. I’ve never had any problem with the CIA. I’d have no problem working for them.

<snip>

I applied to the CIA and I went all the way to the end, I mean it was to the point where I was going to sign papers to become Clandestine Services,” Moulitsas admits in the interview. “And it was at that point that the Howard Dean campaign took off and I had to make a decision whether I was gonna kinda join the Howard Dean campaign, that whole process, or was I was going to become a spy. (Laughter in the audience.) It was going to be a tough decision at first, but then the CIA insisted that if, if I joined that, they’d want me to do the first duty assignment in Washington, DC, and I hate Washington, DC. Six years in Washington, DC [inaudible] that makes the decision a lot easier.

Comments at the Commonwealth Club, Markos Moulitsas 6-02-06 (http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/06/06-06zuniga-audio.html)




I was just musing on the phenomenon we concern ourselves with here in contemplating a new way of constructing the site and discussion. We worry about thinkings sinking into obscurity. No doubt Tinoire can't wait for Chlamor's posts to go the way of yours, wolf's, anax's..

Within each category there can be an archive forum, threads can be moved there and made sticky. One small way to help overcome the problem. Also, pages can be "staticized" yet still link to an ongoing dynamic conversation - best of both worlds, with the OP and the first few comments permanent and stable and never becoming invisible, yet the posibility for live discussion still being there.

The Who? is Kos. Hes a real dick.

tres interessent!

I'm going to pretend "tres interessent" means "No Duh"

The Who? is Kos. Hes a real dick.

WTF???! Is everybody a fuckin' spook? Markos, Tinoire, Mairead... Gimme a break.

I take it back... This is just like Tsarist Russia and the Okhrana is the only significant employer.

Who gets to play Azef?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Azef_ef.jpg/185px-Azef_ef.jpg

The Who? is Kos. Hes a real dick.

WTF???! Is everybody a fuckin' spook? Markos, Tinoire, Mairead... Gimme a break.

Fear not, there is a way out of this conundrum.

I'm gonna make a pot of coffee and gather my thoughts.

Conspiracy theories, truth movements, government moles, informers, snitches, infiltrators.

What!!!! Are you paranoid???? Where's your facts? Prove it!

A certain segment of the population, which we are all probably a little too close to and a little to influenced by, is stuck in a binary trap on these subjects.

70% of the Black population thought OJ Simpson should go free. 70% of the white population thought he should be strung up. How can that be? Whites assumed that Simpson is Black, Black people are Black, therefore they side with him because he is one of their own. (They never consider that whites also side with their own, and that this explains their "opinions" - which is actually far more true than the other way around.) The way whites look at this and other subjects is prejudiced by race - not really race per se, but class, as I will explain in a moment.

I was still living in Detroit, in an AA neighborhood when the OJ phenomenon erupted. I was on the road and performing when the chase drama unfolded, and heard it on every radio station, and then heard white folks obsessively talking about it everywhere.

When I got home, I remarked to a neighbor that I couldn't understand why people were so worked up about the OJ case. He said "are you f-ing with me man? Black man kills blond white woman? What world do you live in?" I hadn't seen any TV about it, and didn't realize that his wife was white. Interestingly, I had heard dozens and dozens of white people talking endlessly about the case in great detail, and still did not know that his wife was white. Yet when I got back home every Black person mentioned that in the first few minutes when they talked about the case.

What to make of this, and how does it apply to the subject of government infiltrators?

In the OJ case, people had the same information, yet drew opposite conclusions, and that fell along racial lines. But it was not so much primarily a matter of Black versus white. It was more a matter of identifying with the authorities or identifying with the working class accused. Whites, by the way, did not see OJ as working class, Blacks did. Whites saw him as wealthy, successful, powerful. Blacks saw him as one of the few who were allowed into successful circles, and saw success by Black people as still subject to white ruling class control and something that could be yanked at any moment on any sort of pretext.

The Simpson defense was a "conspiracy theory." Cops and authorities, with racist attitudes, had conspired to frame OJ. Whites weren't "buying" that wacky conspiracy theory. This framing theory is not without merit. More importantly, it reflects a widespread and long standing pattern of injustice done to Black people by white authorities, and the gleeful lynch mob mentality of the white community was impossible to ignore and is also an important part of the narrative. So just as OJ's success, coming from a poor background and achieving fame and fortune, was a proxy for the yearnings of millions of Black people, so too his defense became a proxy for righting hundreds of years of abuse of Black people at the hands of whites.

70% of Black people identify with the working class. 70% of white people identify with the ruling class.

White people couldn't understand how that jury could find OJ innocent. What difference does it make if the cops made a few little mistakes? So what if the prosecution botched the case? Who cares if the cops were racist assholes with a history of framing Black people? So what if the chain of custody on the evidence was all screwed up?

But the job of the jury is not to hang the accused. The job of the jury is to weigh the merits of the state's case. It is not up to them to decide if they feel that the accused is guilty, it is up to them to decide whether or not the state made the case beyond a reasonable doubt. The burden of proof is on the state.

White people think that miscarriages of justice are the exception. Black people know that they are the rule.

Black people and white people look at the whole issue of conspiracy theory in exactly opposite ways. That is to say that the 70% of Black people who identify with the working class look at things differently than the 70% of the white people who identify with the ruling class.

From the Black perspective, all whites are shilling for, snitching for, siding with, apologizing for and defending the authorities. Some are on the payroll, some aren't, some are in an official capacity, some aren't. Who cares if Kos is actually on the payroll of the CIA or not? He is doing their work for them, and whites are always doing the work of the ruling class for them for free. The fact that he could very well be is the point, just as the fact that OJ - guilty or not - was being victimized by a very familiar pattern of police misconduct and lynch mob mentality from the white community.

From the white perspective, "Americans" - the authorities, the leaders, the ruling class, and their sycophants - are presumed to be just innocently walking around minding their own business. So you have to prove that "Bush planted explosives in the twin towers and brought them down in a controlled demolition" with "facts" and on the other side among whites there is an assumption that catching the authorities in a vast secret conspiracy is supposed to curl all of our hair, enlighten us and transform the universe. "Oh how shocking the American people need to wake up and realize that this cabal is a bunch criminals! Gasp! Oh the horror of it all!" This cabal. These leaders.

Whether or not you think "Bush did 911" or "Kos is a CIA agent" is not the point. The point is the context - thinking that were these things true they would be exceptions, anomalies, unusual, remarkable and earth shattering betrays a ruling class bias.

Holland is not so much saying that he can prove that Kos is a government informer, he is saying that he might as well be, that white liberals are curiously disinterested in whether he is or not, that there is sufficient evidence to be asking questions about it, and that it is entirely consistent with the way that white liberals act, and the way the authorities operate, all of the time, not just in this one isolated case. It isn't some earth-shattering revelation - the reaction of white liberals is the noteworthy revelation.

There is a vast secret conspiracy going on, every day, permeating every aspect of our lives, to preserve ruling class power. White liberals on and off the payroll, in official and unofficial capacity, are part of it. In the absence of that class analysis, both "sides" to every argument between liberals are absurd and ridiculous. They are predicated on the assumption that the authorities are innocent until proved guilty. That makes "proving" that "Bush pulled off 911" some sort of exciting pursuit that will supposedly really change things. That also makes de-bunking conspiracy theories seem like "reasonable" and "practical" activities that give liberals deep satisfaction. But both sides of the argument function to keep the much vaster conspiracy hidden from view. Both are prejudiced by ruling class bias.

That is the conundrum of modern liberalism concerning conspiracy theories and paranoia.

Believing in the conspiracy theory is denying the larger conspiracy. De-bunking the conspiracy theory is denying the larger conspiracy. Both serve the ruling class.

I think I have stumbled onto something bigger than I first thought.

After writing the last post, the very next discussion among liberals that I came upon fit the same pattern.

Misogyny bares its teeth on the internet (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1646860)

PopIndy Law #1:

"In the absence of class analysis, every discussion on every subject among liberals will inevitably devolve into a bitter and unresolvable feud between people with two absurd and ridiculous positions, both of which support the ruling class agenda."

Notice on that thread that authoritarianism and fear mongering are justified because they are being used for a good cause. Anyone objecting can be called misogynist and disposed of. "This is a really really big problem and we all need to get worked up about it!"

On the other side, the serious issue of misogyny can be dismissed, in the name of "freedom" and "reason."

The authoritarians against the libertarians. No leftists to be seen.

Notice that no other points of view are tolerated. All posts must be cast as being on one side or the other. "If you are not 100% with me, then you are the same as those who are 100% against me."

Most of the people at DU, let alone people in the general public, reject both sides, but they are aggressively excluded. That is how particpation is suppressed and how hopes of building the Left are crushed, again and again, much more effectively than anything the right wingers could do.