CRACKDOWN on "conspiracy theorism"/unAmerican activities on babble

After this, I think I'll start a thread about grumbling being only permitted in the designated space.

@ Fidel: I agree with you. I am deeply uncomfortable with moderators deciding what can and cannot be discussed. By all means, try to keep people polite and in the right forum, but taking moderating beyond that is a recipe for a thinly-populated echo chamber.

Hey!!..a quotes thread.

Quote:

The simple fact of being without reply has given to the false an entirely new quality. At a stroke it is truth which has almost everywhere ceased to exist or, at best, has been reduced to the status of pure hypothesis that can never be demonstrated. The false without reply has succeeded in making public opinion disappear: first it found itself incapable of making itself heard and then very quickly dissolved altogether.

Spectacular domination's first priority was to make historical knowledge in general disappear; beginning with just about all rational information and commentary on the most recent past. The evidence for this is so glaring it hardly needs further explanation. With mastery the spectacle organizes ignorance of what is about to happen and, immediately afterwards, the forgetting of whatever has nonetheless been understood. The most important is the most hidden.

Didn't an US Supreme Court justice say he couldn't define pornography but he could recognize it when he saw it? I feel in a similar manner about conspiracy theories. The almost always fly in the face of Occam's Razor.

If you have a problem with my moderating, Apples, critique it in this thread. Don't insult me again in my place of work, or I will suspend you.

Quote:

In 1986 [Webster] Tarpley attempted to run onLyndon LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party platform in the New York State Democratic Party primary for the U.S. Senate, but was ruled off the ballot because of a defect in his nominating petitions. He was a frequent host of "The LaRouche Connection" which its producer LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review News Service describes as "a news and information cable television program."...He gained experience as a political operative during his years with the LaRouche movement but broke away sometime after 1995.

 

Rebecca West wrote:

Okay, given the ratio of contribution to baiting, you lose.  You're banned Snert.

Unnecessary. Is this a banning or a suspension?
The members are grownups and can handle these situations.
I'm almost left wondering if the moderators have decided to piss off the members this afternoon. I dismiss this of course because they are both professionals.
The traffic on this site continuals to dwindle. Baning long-time members can only hasten the demise of Babble.

For continuing your personal attacks after being asked to stop, 500_Apples, I'm giving you 24 hours off. This is my place of work and I won't tolerate an abusive workplace. In case you missed it, this thread is still open.

Thanks for your kind and respectful comments, Fidel.

If you are looking for a harrassment free workplace, shouldn't you have a responsibility towards it too?  In my experience, you are as big a contributor to harrassment and personal attacks as anyone- but you get to have the hammer coming home- so you get to enforce your bullying and snide commentary.  I think you might do with a 24 hour introspection yourself frankly.

or just slowly drift away.

Can't believe I'm saying this...but lets all take that last deep breath before the insurrection really breaks out, just to see if we really want to go there. Or better yet, lets all head over to Free Dominion or someplace similar for awhile. We might be surprised at what it could do for solidarity around here. And oh yeah..boo hoo about the workplace thing. You manage the joint.

in defense of fairness, it's one thing to say "you're wrong, here's why" and it's another thing to say someone is wrong, but also "pathetic, dumb, etc"....

it's using words like that that make this place toxic sometimes.  If poster could just keep it inside the bounds of respectful debate and not heaping on the insulting language we wouldn't have these problems.  Sure, the mods sometimes make contradictory decisions, but they're people not computer programs.  

I've disagreed with the mods on several occasions and i've never been banned or suspended because i'm not hurtling insults at them and denigrating them as people.  is that so hard?  

al-Qa'bong wrote:

While Snert's purpose here was to some degree motivated by trying to provoke people...he toned down his act quite a bit from his previous incarnation, Mr. Magoo.

Snert was Mr. Magoo?  ha!

I wish some of these original thinkers could learn how to discuss their feelings in respectful language.

If I found myself calling others on here (especially the mods) pathetic I would feel embarrassed.

With respect, I have problems with the idea that Babbles anti-imperialist policy prohibits discussion of imperialism interfering in the domestic affairs of people by fostering  or supporting popular uprisings or civil unrest. .Such tactics have been used by imperialists for thousands of years. and certainly have been used in modern times . Whether or not they have been used in the Arab Spring is, I submit,  a fit topic for discussion.:

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The United States made use of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to do away with a string of unfriendly Third World governments and to support allied ones.[71] In 1953, President Eisenhower's Central Intelligence Agency implemented Operation Ajax, a covert operation aimed at the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The popularly-elected and non-aligned Mosaddegh had been a Middle Eastern nemesis of Britain since nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere.[131][132][133][134] The pro-Western shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, assumed control as an autocratic monarch.[135] The shah's policies included the banning of the communist Tudeh Party and general suppression of political dissent by SAVAK, the shah's domestic security and intelligence agency.

In Guatemala, a CIA-backed military coup ousted the left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.[136] The post-Arbenz government, a military junta headed by Carlos Castillo Armas, returned nationalized American property, set up a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, and decreed a Preventive Penal Law Against Communism at the request of the United States.[137]

In the Republic of the Congo, newly independent from Belgium since June 1960, the CIA-cultivated President Joseph Kasa-Vubu ordered the dismissal of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the Lumumba cabinet in September; Lumumba called for Kasa-Vubu's dismissal instead.[138] In the ensuing Congo Crisis, the CIA-backed Colonel Mobutu quickly mobilized his forces to seize power through a military coup d'état.[138]

In British Guiana, the leftist People's Progressive Party (PPP) candidate Cheddi Jagan won the position of chief minister in a colonially-administered election in 1953, but was quickly forced to resign from power after Britain's suspension of the still-dependent nation's constitution.[139] Embarrassed by the landslide electoral victory of Jagan's allegedly Marxist party, the British imprisoned the PPP's leadership and maneuvered the organization into a divisive rupture in 1955, engineering a split between Jagan and his PPP colleagues.[140] Jagan again won the colonial elections in 1957 and 1961; despite Britain's shift to a reconsideration of its view of the left-wing Jagan as a Soviet-style communist at this time, the United States pressured the British to withhold Guyana's independence until an alternative to Jagan could be identified, supported, and brought into office.[141].

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

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Operation Mongoose was a secret program of propaganda, psychological warfare, and sabotage against Cuba to remove the communists from power; which was a prime focus of the Kennedy administration, according to Harvard historian Jorge Domínguez.[1] A document from the US Department of State confirms that the project aimed to "help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime", including its leader Fidel Castro, and it aimed "for a revolt which can take place in Cuba by October 1962". US policy makers also wanted to see "a new government with which the United States can live in peace". (Source: US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962 Washington, DC [1])

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In 1972, the monetary policies increasing the amount of circulating currency, adopted by economics minister Pedro Vuskovic, devalued the escudo, provoking inflation to 140 percent in 1972 and engendering a black market economy.[10] The Allende Government acted against the black market with organised distribution of basic products. In October 1972, Chile suffered the first of many socially confrontational strikes — led by the Chilean rich — openly supported by U.S. President Richard Nixon via the CIA.[11]

Soon, small-scale businessmen, some professional unions, and student groups joined the strike. Its leaders — Vilarín, Jaime Guzmán, Rafael Cumsille, Guillermo Elton, Eduardo Arriagada — expected to depose the elected government. Other than damaging the national economy, the principal effect of the twenty-four-day strike was drawing Army head, Gen. Carlos Prats, into the government as Interior Minister, an appeasement to the right wing.[10] Gen. Prats succeeded Gen. René Schneider after his assassination on 24 October 1970, by the groups of Gen. Roberto Viaux and Gen. Camilo Valenzuela whom the CIA financed and logistically supported. Moreover, Gen. Prats supported the legalist Schneider Doctrine and refused military involvement in a coup d'état against President Allende.[12]

Despite the declining economy, President Allende's Popular Unity coalition increased its vote to 43.2 percent in the March 1973 parliamentary elections, however, by then, the informal alliance between Popular Unity and the Christian Democrats ended.[13] The Christian Democrats allied with the right-wing National Party, who were opposed to Allende's Socialist government; the two right-wing parties forming the Confederación Democrática (CODE) (The Democratic Coalition). The internecine parliamentary conflict, between legislature and the executive branch paralyzed practical government.[14] To destabilise the Allende Government, the CIA paid some U.S.$8 million to right-wing opposition groups to "create pressures, exploit weaknesses, magnify obstacles" and hasten President Allende's deposition.[15][16] The CIA report released in 2000 records some U.S. $6.8 million spent for the deposition.[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973

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And I think we are all aware of imperialist support for  Afghan "freedom fighters" seeking "freedom" from soviet rule.

 

None of this is meant to deny popular support for uprisings against unpopular government, It is meant to show that imperialism can and does foster and support popular uprisings, and that possible imperialist fostering and support of popular uprisings is a valid topic for discussion on Babble.

solidarity

voice of the damned wrote:

The thread in question...was saying that the entire Arab Spring, involving thousands of activists of varying ideological stripes. scattered across several nations and two continents, only happened because the CIA willed it to happen.

It's too simplistic to make either of these assertions: That the Arab Spring was

1.  100% caused by the CIA (and that popular action played no role) or

2.  100% due to popular action (and that the CIA had zero involvement).

The first assertion is not only simplistic but it is demonstrably false (there were massive protests and, in many cases, harsh reprisals against the protesters).  The second assertion, given past history, is almost certainly false.

As someone noted earlier, reality almost certainly falls somewhere between those two extremes...and that the relative influences are matters of degree and matters of legitimate discussion.

These Arab Spring threads are proof that there is no radical left in Canada, and that those who claim to be part of radical leftist movements should be denied power, because of their softcore racism.

Considering how many people that get banned come back and since they cannot ban by IP,I'd say that would be a surety

As  opposed to giving the power to the hardcore racism of those on the right CMOT?

Such nonsensical comments CMOT are surely below your capabilities?!

 

 

Bacchus wrote:

polly bee wrote:

al-Qa'bong wrote:

That said, I wonder why Magoo even came back to babble, considering how he chortled on EnMasse about being banned here.

Snert was Magoo??!  I would've expected more swearing....

Well he was banned back then for saying fuck. So yeah

I'd have to say that I think that policy's been retired.

It's a funny line, but it doesn't accurately reflect why Magoo was banned. I do recall a social understanding on this board that it's not cool to post about banned babblers.

(Posted with Pogo, and not as a response to Pogo.)

Fidel wrote:

I'm not all or nothing. But I think that the most well funded intelligence agency, and the most secretive government in world history is deeply involved.

Thanks for that clarification.

I believe writer is referring to what's taking place on this thread right now.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

I believe writer is referring to what's taking place on this thread right now.

 

Ah my error. Sorry about that