A pm I just recieved from our newest member Pinch

[MacCruiskeen]

I don't think that the admins really know or care

Well, you just told me explicitly that they do know, in the case of boloboffin. And in the case of Sweet Pea. And did nothing, except to support and encourage them for years (though SP did finally become too embarrassing).

Another question (apart from the PM-to-Skinner request): Was it actually publicly announced that Sweet Pea had been tombstoned? Was any reason given?

[JackRiddler]

.

Tombstones are never publicly announced. Sometimes it's allowed for members to talk about them, sometimes not, that part of it seems arbitrary.

I'm with HR in doubting admin deals with specific 'bunkers, generally speaking, and to mistrust claims thereof, especially from the likes of Sweet Pea. I think admins simply consider the 9/11 issue to be a problem they wish would go away, they genuinely don't want to believe it stinks or consider the questions, but they can't disappear it because openness about it in 2001-2004 or so attracted literally hundreds of DU's most active core members to this day. So the bias seems to be to tolerate a lot of ad hom and bullshit in the dungeon from the 'bunkers, also to tolerate almost the same from skeptics or "truthers" so as to maintain some fashion of fairness, also to dump all tinfoil and unrelated "conspiracy" matter there, also to tolerate the Woods/Reynolds promotion.

[MacCruiskeen]

I'm with HR in doubting admin deals with specific 'bunkers, generally speaking, and to mistrust claims thereof, especially from the likes of Sweet Pea.

Jack, SP was demonstrably tolerated for long after he was outed. That's verifiable, even without his own claim:

The PM I received from the mods a few weeks ago stated since I was staying within my core expertise (which was slamming you conspiricy nuts so well) and not slamming Dems [!!!], they were going to let me stay, as long as I minded my p's and q's.

Now boloboffin too. A tormented fundie with only one core expertise, i.e.: "slamming you conspiricy nuts so well".

Again the request for a PM to Skinner. He won't necessarily tell the truth, but it's perfectly reasonable to expect him to give an answer.

- I've just looked and I see that buffoon Perry Logan is back. (The Bedunker is a many-headed Hydra.) And only days ago, seemslikeadream told me Logan had been tombstoned for being an embarrassing lunatic on YouTube, and she provided a link to demonstrate his lunacy:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=jgnvNcdOHik

"Wild and crazy left-wing rant"...? This doesn't discredit Democrats? See the side-bar at YouTube. That video is only one of Perry Logan's many gifts to the world.

What the fuck is going on at DU?

[MacCruiskeen]

"If they can get you asking the right questions in the wrong place, they don't have to worry about the answers."

The truth has never been of any use to someone confined to a dungeon.

[JackRiddler]

Logan was tombstoned for this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=6388383

How is he back?

And you're using Sweet Pea as the source for his supposed cover-by-PM.

[MacCruiskeen]

How is he back?

Oops, sorry, misread it, the Perry Logan thread i was referncing started in May. It's just been bumped back up.

And you're using Sweet Pea as the source for his supposed cover-by-PM.

No, just pointing out that Sweet Pea said the Mods had pm'd him "weeks ago". But it's independently verifiable that he was back at DU the day after being outed as a "right-wing reactionary", which was the day after they had deleted all the evidence, which was the day after boloffin sent the DU Mods to RI to see the "DU OUTED" thread. And he was around for many days after that too, starting threads and contributing to them.

[HamdenRice]

Mac, you might want to take a look at this thread. This is the closest we've come, I think, to getting a sense of what the mods think of 9/11 and the 9/11 dungeon:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 107#154309

I don't think it would be useful to pm them because (1) they won't respond, and (2) it just puts the pm'er on their radar to get tombstoned.

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks, Hamden.

God, they are foul; morally, intellectually and politically. It's simply indefensible. They are sneaks, liars, cowards, timewasters and petty dictators. Either that or they're paid spooks, and I'll go with that explanation because it's a far less depressing explanation.

Nothing like an honest debate is possible there.

The single most destructive effect of DU is that it conditions people to avoid speaking their minds for fear of punishment:

I don't think it would be useful to pm them because (1) they won't respond, and (2) it just puts the pm'er on their radar to get tombstoned.

The second most destructive effect of DU is that it conditions people to being endlessly polite and patient towards lunatics, timewasters and right-wing reactionaries, who will never be persuaded by any argument or any evidence, ever.

It's deeply pernicious. And it demonstrates, in microscosm, everything that's so very badly wrong with US politics in the 21st century.

What America needs is more division. Or rather: What America needs is belated recognition of the unbridgable divisions that are already there. Lithos and Skinner are not my allies, or yours, unless we choose to ally ourselves with people who are professionally dishonest, and who delight in intimidating us and wasting our time.

[nathan28]

Thanks, Hamden.

God, they are foul; morally, intellectually and politically. It's simply indefensible. They are sneaks, liars, cowards, timewasters and petty dictators. Either that or they're paid spooks, and I'll go with that explanation because it's a far less depressing explanation.

They're owned by the same conglomerate that owns the Financial Times and the Economist. Back in the 19th Century, the Economist was arguing that reducing the working day from, if I'm not mistaken, 12 hours to 11 would result in the economy stagnating.

[MacCruiskeen]

They're owned by the same conglomerate

Owned? Which conglomorate do you mean, nathan? Got any evidence?

[JackRiddler]

.

MacC, granting several of your points, at least see the history of why DU was created or acquired a membership in the first place: as an enclave for left-liberal protest against the "illegitimate Bush administration" (to quote the founding document), within an Internet in which you already had Free Republic and can't post anything in most places without getting reflex abuse from the full-time Limbaugh-style dittoheads (in style and logic, if not political beliefs). The Dungeon is like a microcosm of what the Internet's debate sphere has been all along.

[HamdenRice]

One more bit of historical information about DU, Mac -- which I was reminded of because of Jack's mention that DU used to be very friendly toward 9/11 skepticism and other "parapolitics" analysis.

Have you ever heard of the "Gannongate wrinkles" threads? That explains I think about 90% of why the mods treat the 9/11 forum the way they do, and it has to do with having been burned.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=3144209

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 79#3200711

Back in early 2005, you may recall, the planted republican fake journalist Jeff Ganon, of the White House press corps, was revealed to be not only not a real journalist, but a homosexual male prostitute named James Guckert. The liberal blogosphere was atwitter for several weeks.

Then someone on DU and people elsewhere came up with the intriguing idea that Gannon/Guckert was some sort of "Manchurian candidate" character. It was believed that he was the grown up victim of a child kidnapping named Johnny Gosch.

DU ran several threads of research into the Johnny Gosch story, which was truly bizarre enough. To make a long story short, Gosch disappeared during the Bush I regime, and his appearance seemed to be linked to the so called Franklin credit union scandal -- a multifaceted, stranger than strange story of a Nebraska child abuse and child prostitute ring that reached all the way into the Bush I White House, and that involved prositutes used for intelligence and blackmail purposes in DC, and gay male child prosititutes being given midnight tours of the Bush I White House. It was speculated that paperboy Gosch was "disappeared" into a child abuse/prostitution ring.

Someone came up with the idea Gannon/Guckert was the grown up Johnny Gosch. Thousands of posts, some quite hysterical, were entered into DU analyzing the evidence. It turned out, however, that Gannon/Guckert's school records were inconsistent with a Johnny Gosch connection, but the mainstream media picked up on it and DU got one of its first mentions in the New York Times as the crazy place where people thought that Jeff Gannon was a long ago kidnapped Nebraska paperboy.

At that point, it seems, the mods decided that DU would never again be identified with "crazy conspiracy theories," and that's when it's very harsh treatment of 9/11 skepticism started.

[MacCruiskeen]

The Dungeon is like a microcosm of what the Internet's debate sphere has been all along.

Jack, but it's different here, is it not? Ergo, it is possible to be honest and rational and left, and to be all that on the Internet. It's not rocket science.

Note that DU would have been perfectly happy to see another Clinton in the White House, possibly for eight years. Supporting DU is, therefore, de facto support of the one-party state with the two right wings. (I wonder what Gore Vidal would think of DU?)

at least see the history of why DU was created or acquired a membership in the first place: as an enclave for left-liberal protest

- or a holding-bay, playpen, energy-sink and Skinner Box. Ergo: Spooks. Knowingly or unknowingly, for money or for free, by accident or by design. The end result is the same.

Rational 9/11 scepticism has to go public, has to be unashamedly out, sooner or later. It's long past time. And it's better to burst a boil painfully than to let it cripple you indefinitely.

Im übrigen: die Linke wird sich mit 9/11 beschäftigen müssen. - Red in the original. Andreas Hauss has taken to appending that to every 9/11 post on his website. I think he's right. And I think the red highlighting is justified.

[stickdog99]

What America needs is more division. Or rather: What America needs is belated recognition of the unbridgable divisions that are already there.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

[MacCruiskeen]

Hamden Rice wrote:

...DU got one of its first mentions in the New York Times as the crazy place where people thought that Jeff Gannon was a long ago kidnapped Nebraska paperboy. At that point, it seems, the mods decided that DU would never again be identified with "crazy conspiracy theories," and that's when it's very harsh treatment of 9/11 skepticism started.

So DU is tewwified of what the NYT thinks of it. Doesn't that say it all?

I wrote:

The single most destructive effect of DU is that it conditions people to avoid speaking their minds for fear of punishment

and

It's deeply pernicious. And it demonstrates, in microscosm, everything that's so very badly wrong with US politics in the 21st century.

If certain people were persistently talking absolute rubbish in those threads, then the Mods could have intervened and said: "This is absolute rubbish. Stop it." Simple. It's not brain surgery. And they don't have to ban all rational discussion of now-practically-unignorable evidence of government treason and mass murder.

-- By the way: In 2008, their very use of the thoughtstopping, powerworshipping cant term "conspiracy theory" is deeply dishonest, or worse. There is simply no excuse for it. Much less for consigning you, SLAD, Jack Riddler, stickdog99 and 'Minstrel Boy' (pars pro toto) to an obscure dungeon, along with people as sick as boloboffin, who think God might hate them for being gay or who believe Elvis was kidnapped by Martians.