***DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND OUTED AS A RIGHT-WING FRONT***

[Jeff]

I think the pm Mac received was born of legitimate concern that some posters might not know their actions here could have consequences there, but I think that's well understood by longtime DU members. (Though, of course, it appears the only consequence for the outing of a Bush supporter whose blog describes DU as the "apex of the lunatic left" is to delete and lock the revelations.)

I started Rigint only because Skinner rejected my petition for a "Deep Politics" subgroup, so I'll always owe him that. Also for the good hearts and sound minds I met there, when I was there. And I'll say this, too: all forums - this one included - and all time spent online can be energy sinks that keep us busy at the semblance of changing the world while the real one remains as fucked as it ever was. That problem isn't unique to DU. That's the daemon of the Internet.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

This forum's had plenty of energy sinks, but hey, at least it's fun resisting their gravity when you know their a waste of time. You can't survive this stuff without a sense of humor; it will drive you fucking insane.

Incidentally, what's the ratio of locked threads here compared to DU, like 100:1?

1000:1?

[medicis]

I think the pm Mac received was born of legitimate concern that some posters might not know their actions here could have consequences there, but I think that's well understood by longtime DU members. (Though, of course, it appears the only consequence for the outing of a Bush supporter whose blog describes DU as the "apex of the lunatic left" is to delete and lock the revelations.)

I started Rigint only because Skinner rejected my petition for a "Deep Politics" subgroup, so I'll always owe him that. Also for the good hearts and sound minds I met there, when I was there. And I'll say this, too: all forums - this one included - and all time spent online can be energy sinks that keep us busy at the semblance of changing the world while the real one remains as fucked as it ever was. That problem isn't unique to DU. That's the daemon of the Internet.

Boy, a truer truth ain't never been said. Problem is, I, at least, am irrisistably drawn to places where people with ideas more or less like mine congregate. Especially the more anxious I get. Smart, smart smart... they're fucking smart. Got people pegged.

Suddenly, I feel kinda trapped....

[Et in Arcadia ego]

Buy a good fuzz box.

Worked for me.

[Gouda]

all forums - this one included - and all time spent online can be energy sinks that keep us busy at the semblance of changing the world while the real one remains as fucked as it ever was.

This forum is/was most certainly an energy sink - but it is/was also a kind of holding tank - the trick is to convert that E into Mass. There's an upside in the time/energy sink trade-off: the education I've got here has been invaluable. But it is useless unless, well, it is put to use.

[MacCruiskeen]

Ninakat wrote:

At any rate, fuck DU. Thanks MacC for bringing this to light. They really need to be exposed for the slime they are.

Seemslikeadream (SLAD) deserves the thanks, ninakat. It was she who found Sweet Pea's website (after a foolish mistake by boloboffin), and it was she who saved the evidence from the DU board and then posted it here before they deleted it. All I did was start a new thread about it.

Now I'm wondering who Deep Throat (who PM'd you) is. I know it's none of my business, but the Kat gets Kurious when there's a secret

Well, I'll just say that it's not a regular poster to RigInt, but a fairly regular poster to DU. Not a user-name you would necessarily even recognise, unless you had once spent a fair amount of time in their 9/11 dungeon.

Again: I have no doubt the suggestion was made in good faith and with the best of intentions, and I will in fact be sorry if anyone gets banned or suspended from DU because of this thread. (Especially Jack Riddler and SLAD, who have been amazingly patient and persistent and productive in the face of constant bullying over there.) But a line has to be drawn somewhere, sooner or later. The MO of DU is intimidation, and the petty power of their Moderators shouldn't be allowed to creep beyond the borders of their own board. This is politics in microcosm.

[MacCruiskeen]

all forums - this one included - and all time spent online can be energy sinks that keep us busy at the semblance of changing the world while the real one remains as fucked as it ever was.

This forum is/was most certainly an energy sink - but it is/was also a kind of holding tank - the trick is to convert that E into Mass. There's an upside in the time/energy sink trade-off: the education I've got here has been invaluable. But it is useless unless, well, it is put to use.

The entire Internet is a time-and-energy sink, as we all keep pointing out. Still, it does matter if you're using your time and energy to communicate with people who are:

a) dishonest, in love with their own petty power, and probably pursuing a hidden agenda:

or:

b) honest.

Right now, I'm finding it hard to say exactly why it matters, but I feel sure that it does. Jeff has just started a very interesting thread about Charles Fort; it makes my brain hurt, but there may be an answer in there somewhere.

[StarmanSkye]

--quote--

It's long been my strong suspicion that DU's founder, who chooses to call himself "Skinner", is running a Skinner Box, and that many of the "debunkers" at the 9/11 Dungeon are full-time paid operatives. (How else do they find the time, the energy and the desire to do what they do?) The place is incredibly popular, and therefore an enormous time-and-energy sink.

So this incident deserves a lot of publicity. I cannot think of any rational explanation for it except that DU is a deliberate right-wing front organisation designed to attract, monitor, channel and neutralise dissent on the Web.

--*****--

I tend to agree -- DU is an INCREDIBLY effective energy-sink. It's hard to imagine its just incidentally or circumstantially, accidently so, without being an actual disinfo/deflection-work-in-progress.

Thanx for posting this heads-uP!

[professorpan]

I've never posted at DU, but I have one question about this exposé (which seems quite damning, to be sure):

Where is evidence of "spooks" in this? I see the word get tossed around carelessly, and it shouldn't be.

Maybe I missed something.

[MacCruiskeen]

I've never posted at DU, but I have one question about this exposé (which seems quite damning, to be sure):

Where is evidence of "spooks" in this? I see the word get tossed around carelessly, and it shouldn't be.

Maybe I missed something.

Pan, I don't know what would count for you as evidence of spooks, because they're never going to actually out themselves and say, "Yes, I'm a spook", least of all on the Internet. But COINTELPRO is certainly still alive in one form or another. And I don't know what else would count as a rational explanation of DU's behaviour, as documented here. The sheer persistence and stamina of those numerous "debunkers", literally every day, for years on end, is something I've never seen on any "left" site with Moderators and a registration requirement.

Now we find out that one of those persistent "debunkers" is a military man and a self-described "right-wing reactionary" who says, on his own website, that the Dems must never be allowed to run the country, and who insults Democratic Underground in his very link to their website. DU's response? They delete the evidence, they permit him to stay, and they lock a second thread on the same topic, without explanation.

And yet they are otherwise notoriously touchy, and happy to ban even long-term posters, including many here, at the drop of a hat.

How would you explain that?

[MacCruiskeen]

One other point.

Somebody was questioning whether "right-wing" (in the thread title) was the correct term. I think it is. I am not denying that there are many vehement anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-corporate-media posts on that website, as well as some valuable information about Iraq, the environment, and much else besides. Nor am I doubting the good faith, niceness and vaguely-leftish/liberal credentials of 99% of the people posting there.

But that's precisely what makes it work as a holding-bay, playpen and energy sink. DU's Mods and Administrators are policing what Chomsky called "the Bounds of the Expressible". All those anti-Bush feelings are going to be felt and expressed anyway, so it's good to have them somewhere where they can easily be monitored, channeled, and taken care of. Almost everybody can say almost anything they please at DU -- except about 9/11, serious examination of which is one of the very few serious threats the US ruling class faces.

Not only has that topic of topics been consigned to a dungeon; the dungeon itself has been made almost uninhabitable by half-a-dozen full-time debunkers, whose 'arguments' are notable not just for their repetitiveness but for their poverty and pettiness. Those half-dozen anonymous and incredibly persistent people are tolerated by DU whatever they do.

And one of them has now been outed as... see above.

[chiggerbit]

I found this intersting contribution from DE a long time ago, about the gatte-keepers, on this page while I was searching Gladio:

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewt ... ght=gladio

Really interesting topic. I've always said that conspiracy theory, when done properly, is structural analysis that NAMES NAMES.

I think it's important to understand JFK as an internecine conflict within the ruling class...but I'd also like very much to know who gave the actual order, thank you very much. (Doubtful it was an actual order...likely a "who will rid me of this troublesome President" kinda scenario.)

I liked "Gnostic gauntlet". Is there a core group of "priests" who are apportioning out the roles? "You, chomsky...you talk about this...but not about that..."

Does it sort of settle out more organically as various left publications stake out ideological territory?

I just had an off list conversation with someone about the role of foundations...and some of that stuff is explicit. I've seen a quote, for example, from some official with one of the big foundations...Ford, I think, who replied to criticism that they funded "radicals" that they specifically did so in order to reign them in. I think that's a big part of the way the landscape is shaped.

I'm also going to start researching Soros...I was reading an article about how he is funding all these left groups but his own business ties are right to extreme right..as in Carlyle Group, Harken Energy (who bailed out Bush) etc.

The theory in the article was that he funds the left groups because Bush is going too far. This is not the right answer, I think. Instead, I think that it is about creating more of the "controlled left", the anti-socialist left. Since he in some sense helped "create" Bush, then it stands to reason that this is all a big "good cop/bad cop" scenario.

Soros just happens to be active in all the countries the CIA is active in...so I assume this isn't just a "Jewish banker (well, speculator") story, but is actually one of those public/private intelligence partnerships that are common and less traceable to the CIA directly.

I even heard that Soros funded "Refuse and Resist" one of the RCP fronts, though if they did, it's no longer on their list of funded organizations by the Open Society Institute.

Hopefully I can have an intro to Soros up soon on my blog. I think he is an excellent example of how this stuff works. Fund the perspectives you want to thrive and also do some funding of perspectives you'd like to "moderate" and create a nice, safe network of opposition that stays within acceptable parameters. It doesn't even mean that all he funds is bad...not at all. So I don't go making blanket condemnation of all who receive his funding. In fact, I note with irony that an organization I used to work with (not particularly a political one) received funding from OSI.

It's sad to remember how that one subject ran some people off the rails.

[crikkett]

But a line has to be drawn somewhere, sooner or later. The MO of DU is intimidation, and the petty power of their Moderators shouldn't be allowed to creep beyond the borders of their own board. This is politics in microcosm.

It's fantastical politics to say the least!

I had a cousin trapped in New Orleans and DU was how I got local information about her and the area (Xavier U) in the 5 days that she waited for rescue.

I found this board from DU, via a link to some amazing story or other.

Over time I learned to ignore a lot of what I read on DU and see it as a way to connect with other people and (I used to think this way anyhow) get news I would otherwise miss.

Note that I said I used to value DU for its news. Lately the noise-to-signal ratio has been very high. But liberal use of the 'hide thread' and 'ignore' functions preserves its entertainment value.

[professorpan]

I've never posted at DU, but I have one question about this exposé (which seems quite damning, to be sure):

Where is evidence of "spooks" in this? I see the word get tossed around carelessly, and it shouldn't be.

Maybe I missed something.

Pan, I don't know what would count for you as evidence of spooks, because they're never going to actually out themselves and say, "Yes, I'm a spook", least of all on the Internet. But COINTELPRO is certainly still alive in one form or another. And I don't know what else would count as a rational explanation of DU's behaviour, as documented here. The sheer persistence and stamina of those numerous "debunkers", literally every day, for years on end, is something I've never seen on any "left" site with Moderators and a registration requirement.

Now we find out that one of those persistent "debunkers" is a military man and a self-described "right-wing reactionary" who says, on his own website, that the Dems must never be allowed to run the country, and who insults Democratic Underground in his very link to their website. DU's response? They delete the evidence, they permit him to stay, and they lock a second thread on the same topic, without explanation.

And yet they are otherwise notoriously touchy, and happy to ban even long-term posters, including many here, at the drop of a hat.

How would you explain that?

There are many explanations that don't require a "spook" pulling the strings. Simple human nature explains it all quite readily.

I guess what I'm getting at is that yelling "spook" doesn't really accomplish much, especially when there is no real evidence of spook manipulation. Human beings are quite capable of acting like assholes, censoring material for silly reasons, and acting in coordination with what "spook" goals -- without having anything to do with actual intelligence agencies and their proxies.

It's like accusing someone of being a "disinfo agent." Of course real disinfo agents exist. But applying that label to someone effectively ends the discussion about the facts and ideas. It's a conversation-ender, and it turns the discussion into an accusation, and there's no way to proceed from there.

In the case of DU, what good does it do to call the mods/owners "spooks" without any evidence? None. I prefer to focus on the actions, and not the personalities. The actions speak for themselves.

[MacCruiskeen]

It's a conversation-ender, and it turns the discussion into an accusation, and there's no way to proceed from there.

You're missing the point, Pan: It can't be a conversation-ender, because the conversation ended before it started. No conversation has ever taken place, because no conversation is wanted or tolerated by the DU Mods & Admins. If you don't believe me, then log in there and try to engage them in conversation. Send them a PM about the topic of this thread. Try it. Tell us how they respond.

And check the two "Locking" posts from Moderator Lithos that I re-posted above: conversation-enders, if ever I saw any. And they are entirely typical. It happens all the time. It has been going on that way for years.

I prefer to focus on the actions, and not the personalities. The actions speak for themselves.

I know nothing, literally nothing, about the personalities of Lithos or Skinner. Nor have I ever said anything about their personalities. If I call them spooks, then solely because of their actions, which are verifiable, which I've recorded here, which speak for themselves, and which reveal them -- unambiguously -- to be a running a front for self-described "right-wing reactionaries" who are working openly against the ostensible, stated aims of Democratic Underground.

So they're spooks. Damn them to hell.