I'm %$##@**&@%# Outta Here!!!

God will watch over us.

Thanks for looking after the place, oldgoat. It already looks a mite brighter. Like a half-empty bottle of joie de vivre.

It's that time of the year again to set off for a bit of a slumber, as I've felt it coming on in my bones for awhile now but it can't be put off for much longer. There's summer time with its assortment of pleasant distractions, along with reading, work to do on my very first blog that's proceeding rather well; and it's even got followers already! Imagine..me...with followers. Anyways, hopefully they're not with the police. I'll probably still post here..or at the other place, but much less overall for awhile.

And concurrent with all of that, it's just as well for the time being because it's quite discouraging that much silencing from every angle has occurred, along with an array of implied or stated recriminations, so much so that it seems as if a universal mute button has been engaged. Conversation and listening have been rendered nearly impossible as a result.

Hey Slumberjack - always look forward to reading you. Have a great summer and don't be a stranger..

Did anything happen to M. Spector?  You know how people disappear into the night from time to time.

I think something was posted to Rabble, but nothing on babble for many moons now...

Didn't Fidel post this week? I saw his name on TAT.

North Report posted at least as recently as the 25th in the B.C. election thread. Does a three day absence count as 'missing'?

Maybe he/she took their own advice and have been out knocking on doors or working the telephones.

Now if you want to talk about someone who has left the board then the post above you is a good example. Boom Boom was one of my favourite posters and he has been gone for quite sometime.

Boom Boom tends to have difficulties with the improved Babble.

I guess it needs to be asked: Are Fidel's postings doing "damage" to the Board or are they just more of a "headache"? I'm posting it here because CF asked that any discussion of it takes place in Reactions. I'll admit I'm finding his postings more obscure, obtuse and dense but I'm not sure repeated suspensions and/or an expulsion  will solve the problem.  I write this in acknowledgement  that moderating is not easy. Fidel is a long time babbler and I'd hate to see us lose his voice and I say that in full knowledge that I disagree with him much more often than not.

Fidel strikes me as a person who likely knows well enough by now that vendettas are reactionary impulses that begets even more reaction.  It's a vicious cycle that the Capitalists have perfected.  The perspective of a flea on an inaccessible part of the bovine arse nearest to where the bullshit pours out seems a better position than always placing oneself within reach of the swishing tail.

So what is the damage, Catchfire?

He might also consider better managing the frustration that stems from investing in theories that fewer people have any time for these days, such as international conspiracies that are pointless to elaborate on because we're already instinctive toward the worst that the capitalist experience can provide, along with notions of peace, order and good government à la the NDP, a situation which is partly attributable to the fact that our over-saturated minds are continuously being drawn toward the latest spectacles on offer.

Slumberjack wrote:

not everyone is a gladio-imperialist-al-CIAduh sympathizer.

Are there any of those here?

And without weighing in on other babblers, I wasn't aware there was any correlation between politics and civil discourse. I think William F. Buckley only once threatened to punch Gore Vidal in the face (and it was after Vidal called him a crypto-Nazi). Other than that the arch-conservative was very polite.

Not to misread, but I don't think you can confuse defense of the cause (whatever that is for you) with defense of other things.

I'm not sure what the suggestion is, SJ.

I'm all for civility, but  if you are saying that civil behaviour is only required with people of our political stripe then no, I don't agree. And I certainly don't think anyone here needs prove anything about values and politics, and I don't know what this vendetta is that you are talking about.

That one went right over my head, SJ.

Yeah, I googled it too. Doesn't help much if it's not clear what he's referring to.

To be honest, I can think of a few people I wasn't sad to see go. Without getting into details that have already been mentioned, Fidel isn't one of them.

My point is (and I am speaking generally here) that these assumptions of vendettas, or that someone having the wrong politics makes it okay to tell him or her to fuck off then go back and erase the evidence, or assume that they are capitalist agents and are somehow to blame for that kind of reaction is absolute crap.

There's plenty of people here I don't agree with on certain issues; I don't assume they're out to get me, or that their presence here is a threat to this board. Quite the opposite.

(edit)

And I should add, that that thing about vendetta goes double when it comes to accusing the moderators. I may not agree with them on everything, but I expect they hold their tongues more than they act. I think it helps to understand who runs the house and where the door is. If someone can't deal with that, the internet is a big place (to get back to the topic heading)

ditto to both Fidel and board civility in general and downturn of venettas.

Yes we all say we want civility, and I don't think any of us wants anyone here to be gone (I don't, anyway).

Thing is, if every time the moderators have to enforce that civility people start imagining that something else is going on and undermining that, that isn't really supporting civility when it counts, is it?

I mean I know we have all seen bad calls, and as posters we have all been guilty of disrupting that civility on occasion.

But does anyone imaging that anyone else doing that job wouldn't be put in exactly the same position, and get the same grief for giving someone a time out?

Whatever you want to call it, I have just seen enough times where people have been repeatedly warned for serious things and finally get canned, and from the response you'd think we were trying to get some freedom fighter out of prison.

These situations are difficult enough without that, and conspiracy theories complicating them.

the point is that Fidel joins a too long list of those run off, mostly people who took an interest in international affairs and whose views were considered unconventional and sometimes controversial by some . Too bad for Babble which will be poorer for the loss. And yes, I would consider him and at least several of those chopped to be 'freedom fighters'. And their chopping not unrelated to that either.

Catchfire wrote:

I won't be enforcing civility.

What do you mean in saying you won't be enforcing civility?  Is this a new leaf or something, because this is what you've been doing all along?