This post is in response to a post I read over at Jack and Jill Politics, entitled, "Jill [Contee] is Headed to Blogging While Brown on Friday."
I'd be really interested to know how a panel at Blogging While Brown came to be named "Netroots in Action"? I did a study of the whitosphere's Netroots Nation website last year and I discovered that there was not ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of the following words being used on the website for the 2008 conference: "Black", "African-American", "Latino" and "Diversity".
Of course it makes sense that "diversity" would NEVER be used on the website since Gina Cooper told the Washington Post last year, "I hate to use the word 'diversity'". Yeah, Gina, and it shows.
"A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators: At the Yearly Kos Bloggers' Convention, a Sea of Middle-Aged White Males"
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 6, 2007; Page C01
So, what I can't understand is why we Blacks have adopted the term "Netroots in Action" when the whitosphere's Netroots doesn't mention us even ONE SINGLE TIME in the program of THEIR yearly conference. Why don't we call it "Afrosphere in Action", for example. Those whites refuse to type the word "Black" even once in their online Netroots Nation program. They refuse to type the phrase "African American" even once. And pseudo-Latino Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga won't even put the word "Latino" even once in the program of the Netroots Nation.
But that shouldn't surprise us, because he has said he ISN'T Latino in the past. After a week in which he was obliged to write about "racism" on campus during college for his college newspaper, he wrote in the college newspaper that he was relieved not to have to think about "racism" anymore:
"And as I left the ugly reality of racism behind, it struck me that what was such an easy and trivial exercise for me would be impossible for anyone whose skin color or religious persuassion (sic) made them the target of bigotry and discrimination. THEY would never be able to escape who THEY were." (Capital letters added.)I think that when he said, "THEY", he was referring to those poor suffering Blacks and Latinos, with whom Markos Moulitsas had nothing at all in common.
"Markos Moulitsas: A Lifetime Insensitive to Democratic Constituencies"
So, you know what the result of calling a panel at this conference "Netroots in Action" will be, right? When the press covers the conference, they will say it is part of the Netroots (white people) and white people will get credit for putting on and accepting a conference that they have absolutely nothing to do with. And those in the whitosphere will say, "Look, the Netroots IS integrated!" We have all of those Black people (segregated) over there at 'our' Netroots Blogging While Black conference!" And the whole point of naming the conference "Blogging While Black" wlll be rhetorically lost.
To me, this is a strategic mistake of phenomenal proportions.
Well, but then who am I to tell people what to do? Go ahead and call your sweat and hard work netroots and thereby give Gina Cooper part of the credit for your efforts, even though she's told a national newspaper, "I hate to use the word diversity!" Next year, you can have a panel called the "David Duke Conference of Blogosphere Diversity."
When the press comes to Blogging While Black, be sure to use the term "netroots" as often as possible, so that CIA trained Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas (2 years training to be a secret agent of the CIA) can take credit for all of the work that you've done, AND have political cover for his virtually all-lilly-white Netroots Nation conference.
Oh yeah! And while you're calling using the name "Netroots", remember that those Netroots didn't give you Black people even one single State Blogger Chair on the floor of the Democratic National Convention. THAT Netroots corps was ALL-WHITE!
I'm not done yet! I keep asking myself how Black people can bear to have anything at all to do with 2-year CIA trainees like Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga? I think the answer is that we are not infiltrating the whiteroots but the whiteroots is infiltrating the afrosphere. SourceWatch.Org And now I discover that our own Jill Tubman (AKA Cheryl Contee of Jack and Jill Politics) is on the Board of Directors of Whiteroots Nation?!
If I were still a member of the AfroSpear (from which I recently resigned) I would propose a rule that no member of the AfroSpear can sit on a board of any agency or corporation which has another board member who has been trained to be a "secret agent" by the CIA. I may be alone in this, but I've always believed that Black people's interests were in direct opposition to the interests being served by the Central Intelligence Agency, and so I see a clear conflict of interests here. The AfroSpear was formed as an alternative to the whitosphere - not as an adjunct to it or a segregated ghetto of it.
Maybe Black bloggers are also being infiltrated by the whiteroots through the secretive TownHouse group, of which CIA trainee Moulitsas-Zuñiga is a member. Maybe there are even some Black members of that CIA-sponsored(?) TownHouse Group, and maybe that's why the WhiteRoots find themselves in the highly ironic position of being able to put their "Netroots" whitosphere name within our "Blogging While Black" conference.
I would have hoped that Black people had learned something about the risks of infiltration by reading the US Congress's Report on Co-Intel-Pro, which was the FBI infiltration and annihilation of the Black Panther Party. I guess not. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the afrosphere has been infiltrated and risks being politically and rhetorically neutered.
We had so much promise before we began interacting and collaborating with that Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga, who admits that he spent two years in training with the CIA and whose family businesses in El Salvador have received a one million dollar loan guarantee from the US Overseas Private Investment Council (OPIC).
7 comments:
Dude, I'm a poor white guy. Colour doesn't mean anything. But then again it does. The internet is rigged. Would it be offensive to call those people you mention Uncle Toms? Again, colour means nothing to me, yet it means everything. We can't even just speak the truth without all the double talk. Great point how no way in hell should any "progressive" African-American be affiliated with the NetRoots.
It's not just Kos. The whole fricken net is rigged. People don't even have to be on intel payrolls to serve their purposes. In short, true progressives, intellectuals, and peaceniks are not wanted.
There is this poster at MyLeftWing called Phil. I. Stine. He used to have the username RecFox. He is a producer of Fox News and a close friend of Maryscott O'Connor. Now there is a producer for John Gibson, the show MSOC has gone on, who goes by the name of Angry Rich. That dude referred to Edwards as a whore. I see that Phil. I. Stine has done the same. Why is a Fox producer one of the top posters and close friends to a blog purporting to represent the Left-o-sphere?
Then there is your cyberstalker, KarmaFish, who admits to having gone to My[Right]Wing to counter your "smears and libel." That guy reeks of some kind of operative position. He is quick to make it seem that Jew hate is coming from the left. But all that has originated from the right. You see, good guy Mr. Holland, the blogosphere is a big, fat joke. It doesn't matter what your colour is, your sexual preference, whether you believe in God, etc.. What matters is if you pose a threat to the status quo. That is what is going on with the net.
I have to say that I agree with you that it's all about whether you pose a threat to the status quo, and most of the whitosphere is there to assure that whites don't become radicalized as they were in the sixties.
Also, there is a very determined effort to see that whites and Blacks don't coalesce around radicalized ideas and actions, simply by segregating the whitosphere from the afrosphere and limiting the discussion.
Socrates, if you're a "poor white guy" then why do you use a Rasta photo as your avatar. That confuses me.
I think the purpose of the big-box blogs must have been like the effect of Wal-Mart: to kill the mom and pop stores that were independent and then homogenize and control the product across the nation and even across continents.
I rambled on a bit, so this will take a few posts. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Thanks for the response. Look, me and you have something in common. We both got into blogging. We tried our best.
It is only after people get unfairly banned, that they start to check the tire pressure, look under the hood, etc..
I picked Bob Marley, because I've always loved his words, music, and philosophy. I never meant to trick anyone. As soon as I realised you thought I was African-American, I let you know I wasn't. Not that it matters. Or it does. You know what I mean. If I used a Red Sox player, I'd take Big Papi over Kevin Youkillis or Papelbon. It's not the skin colour that matters to me. The first guy cares about people. The latter two appear to be rednecks. I guess I'm also someone who would be referred to as an "N" lover by racists.
I'm a lefty who studied Social Theory. Go google Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Paulo Freire, Howard Zinn, Alice Miller, or Frantz Fanon.
I haven't always been poor. Well yes and no. I've never been rich. I've never had much money. I've never gone hungry. My "failing" is that I've always been highly idealistic. So now I am stuck in this toilet bowl of a country doing what I do best. Writing back. The pen is mightier than the sword.
I actually have always been fascinated by social structure. Lately I have come to accept that many of these people are useful idiots. Sure, I still believe there are paid fakes all over the place. Cointelpro is fact. Why wouldn't that type of thing be going on with the internet in some modern incarnation?
But is Maryscott O'Connor an agent? Maybe a political operative, but no spy type. Is she the worst thing to ever happen to the left on the net? Yes. She and Kos and all the Kos offshoots along with other fake progressives have been the worst thing to happen with the internet.
Kos could definitely be a CIA asset. I think he is. We have every right to believe so. When I wrote my spiels at DKos, MyLeftWing, and Democratic Underground, all I got were ad hominem attacks. Anyone who uncovers anything through cybersleuthing is attacked. It's happened to you, me, DaveFromQueens, and others.
A professor once told me that one can go to the Dominican Republic and find people speaking with traces of Irish accents. That's because the British used to send Irish slaves there.
You were right about Hillary being better than Obama, by the way.
Okay, I think you nailed it with your Walmart analogy. Yes, we are the Mom and Pop stores. I started at Huffington in 2005 {different username}, before it was big. You were at DKos. There were all these other big places.
As the months turned into years, and the outspoken were banished from the big places, the deletions and hidden comments grew. The middle took over the left. The left were told to take a hike.
All the disinfo and useful idiots have left is to refer to us as conspiracy theorists. It doesn't matter what we bring to the table for truth. There will be scripts written to paint any individual a certain way. I do not for one second believe that KarmaFish posts for free. But point these kinds of things out, and all of a sudden someone like me is painted as calling everyone cointelpro. That's not what I do. I despise the tinfoil as much as anyone.
{contd.}
People are being shamed. No one will speak out on the big blogs. Hey, even if they don't feel shame, they will be ignored and banned anyway... Or goaded into any kind of angry response to justify a banning. The fake progressives can break any rule. The gadflies must walk on eggshells to survive.
I am a peacenik vegetarian. I believe the quickest solution to our problems would be to cut the military-industrial complex by 80%. Such an obvious solution never gets discussed, because a sophisticated right woos left script has been generated to shut out the true left.
Peace and equality is where it's always been at. Unfortunately, such ideals have become commodified. The tv is obviously worthless. The internet has been some kind of venting mechanism. But when people like ourselves vented too well, the decision was made to shut us up.
They know they can't shut us up totally, because we can be very clever fockers. So they smear us. Then ironically, they label us as the smearers and stalkers.
We are just nice dudes who wanted to be heard in what is astroturfed as being a democracy. Then when we found out the thing has been rigged, we documented it. You are not the only person who has been cybersmeared. The same thing happened to me. I guess the biggest thing we have in common has been our outing of fake progressives.
There's nothing more discouraging to the useful idiots than to have the truth spelled out for them. They would rather continue with their cognitive dissonance than to consider the accumulated facts, or the ideas that spring from free and critical thinkers.
Maybe a new major forum could be started. We'd need some money to get it done. Operatives are all over the internet perverting democratic processes. Whether they are political operatives or from the various intelligence branches of the military, or if they are simply right wing trolls, who knows? It would take work to simply explain to folks how rigged the net is.
That can be done. Right now I can only say let the reader decide. The bad guys are portraying us as trolls and mentally unbalanced or on payrolls. They know we are marginalised on blogspots. But we do have the written word. We are smarter than them. Most importantly, we have the truth.
Yeah, funny how Kos can't explain the time discepancy with the CIA, about the 2001-2003 timeline. It's bad enough that he is an admirer of that organisation. When I did the LetTheSunShine thing, the responses were all making fun of me as tinfoil. Just ad hominems.
I've always been antiwar and liberal. Massachusetts is the only state which voted for McGovern over Nixon. We are the state where the first African-American Regiment formed to fight in the Civil War. Sure, the busing was a bad time. That's actually a pretty good issue to get into. My thinking is, why aren't the schools equal to begin with? Why should anyone have to leave their neighbourhood to get a better education? On the other hand, I would be pro-busing as a patchwork solution. Ugh. There's something in this world called complexity. There are no high powered conversations going on anywhere on the "progressive" blogs.
I wouldn't mind being an internet activist. That's actually what's needed. We need a million groovy people like ourselves to find each other, along with a good platform to exchange information and ideas. We should figure out how to break up the blogospheric status quo.
Socrates, I don't think we need one good platform but rather thousands of good platforms, interlinked but independent, so that no one person or small group of people have the power to shut it down.
Effectively, that's what the afrosphere is. Although dozens or even hundreds of government agents can try to buy it, corrupt it or coopt it, yet no one can compel any individual to say anything s/he doesn't want to say, or refrain from saying it, except by torture.
One of the things that destroyed the Black Panther Party is that it became so thoroughly infiltrated with Governnment spies and agent provocateurs that no member could fully trust any other member anymore.
Another thing that destroyed the BPP was that it was entirely overt, and so when the authorities wanted to shut it down, they knew where all of the pressure points were.
I think the anonymity of the whitosphere has a different purpose. It allows people who would be incredible if identified to seem credible when they are anonymous.
I read the comments to your letthesunshine diary and it was obvious that anyone with a brain knew better than to support you because opposing MAMZ is against the rules, and everyone who was opposing you was doing so without ever challenging the substance of what you had said.
They basically all point at you and laugh simultaneously in the hopes that people who don't know will think you're incredible or incredibly dangerous.
Any blog built around maintaining the credibility of a two-year CIA agent trainee in the American Left is a blog that might as well be run directly out of CIA headquarters. Maybe it is.
There's a Stephen King movie called The Dead Zone. Spoiler Warning. The lead character is a psychic played by Christopher Walken. He knows that a politician is destined to become a Hitler type President. He decides to take the man out. But at the last moment, the politician grabs a baby and shields himself from the would be assassin.
The beauty of this was that the man's political aspirations were ruined, and the psychic didn't have to commit the crime.
We are peaceniks. We are what used to be the norm. The role of the operatives is to maintain the status quo. They definitely own the Walmarts. Hence, I agree with you on the need for tons of smaller sites in which we find ways to have our messages and stories heard. We do so through something I refer to as the reverse-troll. Basically, we get the Kos-type sycophants to hold up the babies in self-defense.
Daily Kos does something called card stacking. By hiding comments and banning anyone who disagrees, the authoritarian types attempt to astroturf themselves as being the grown ups and the free thinkers as disruptive trolls.
As soon as they went to zero tolerance for dissent within the blog, they were doomed to collapse under the weight of their our hypocrisy. Fool me once, twice, that kind of strategy can only go so far. By ganging up on yourself, the thing backfired. The bullying became transparent. No progressive would ever support the CIA.
Kos was busted for those payola type schemes. He then did the internet version of jumping the shark by supporting the CIA. I don't think he ever imagined that his interview with the Commonwealth Club would take on a life of its own.
Instead of stripping the old paint, new coats of lies were packed on the rotted wood. Operatives like KarmaFish were sent to attack you, to in fact cyberstalk, in outrageous attempts to portray yourself as an out of control conspiracy theorist. MSOC just didn't have the mental balance and inner fortitude to do the right thing.
A bunch of times during my brief stay at MLW, I'd ask the "normal" people to explain how applying to the CIA in 2001 for a six month interview was resolved in 2003. If Kos was that clever, he would have said he applied in 2001 and didn't hear back from them until approximately six months before joining the Dean campaign. Actually, I don't think there was any way for him to fix what he blurted out. By phrasing it as he did in reference to the Dean campaign, he admitted that he was in close contact with the CIA, while running a "progressive" blog. It makes one wonder about people like Larry Johnson and many others like Larisa Alexandrovna who have had a very warped influence on the zeitgeist.
Kos basically had no way to fudge his way out of what he himself declared, once the genie was out of the bottle. He has gone with the same strategy he did when the Armstrong payola scandal emerged. Remember the memo he sent out to the Townhouse blogosphere asking them to starve the oxygen out of that story? Since you were so persistent and resourceful, KarmaFish and others were given their assignments to troll you. I've experienced the same kind of thing since also outing various right woos left, disinfo fakes. One needn't even prove that Kos is in the CIA, for the indisputable truth remains that he called them a liberal institution while downplaying their culpability in historic crimes against humanity.
When guys like us mess up, we admit it. We consider mea culpas and retractions. The attacks on you have always consisted on trivial points or ad hominems. So perhaps no one called you the "N" word at Daily Kos. I don't know. But I certainly read where someone called you a monkey. How does an operative like KarmaFish think he is proving his cybersmears, when anyone can see that you were verbally abused in a racist manner at Daily Kos?
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