Open Thread

A little drama over at the blogger this afternoon in two sort-of related threads, in which commenter Zorglub directly confronts Jon Gold and/or makes a criticism of a family member.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/15331
http://www.911blogger.com/node/15353

After Jon Gold's minion DHS shows up to pigpile on the guy, Reprehensor brings out the ban hammer -- for use on Zorglub, naturally. Unfortunately, this means Zorglub's contact information is not available -- I'd thought I'd shoot him an email and let him know where the life raft is.

Why not check out this "experiment" at Air America?

http://airamerica.com/clout/blog/2008/may/02/hollywood-clout#new
Are there thousands of you out there that would like to have 9/11 and the deeper issues it represents be a stronger focus on Progressive radio?

Let's find out!

The first hour of our show tonight will be with Richard Belzer ("Law and Order") as a Co-Host and I WILL ask him, on air, about his views on 9/11. Then, starting the 2nd hour, at 10:05 Eastern we will "meet" as a community.

This "experiment" is part of "The MONTH of TRUTH" Debates that beganlast night on CLOUT! where we had a preliminary discussion on the nature of Conspiracies and False Flag Operations. I played a few minutes from "Zeitgeist, The Movie" and had Webster Tarpley and Mark Fenster, a law professor and author of "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture." Most importantly, while Professor Fenster said that it was "50-50" that the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations were conspiracies, he put 9/11 at "1%."

Yeah, I guess you have to register.

on Animal Planet. That South African guy who rescues chimps is soooo dreamy.

Rep has pulled the plug on blog voting after YT complained that his thread on the West Coast event had received too many bad votes from "cowards." (7 votes, average vote 6.6 probably equals 4 votes of 10 and 3 of 1.) Why do I care? I'll be specific because, in fact, I don't vote on blogs there as much as I used to. Of the two blogs that have had a little blog-author snit following them in the commentary, I hadn't voted on either. But given the strict moderation many of us are under, when we can't expect even civil posts to be published if they address certain members, it's patent bullshit to call anonymous down-voting cowardly. For all either YT or Jon Gold know, the person who voted "1" then left a comment offering a non-anonymous critique that was shown the trash bin by a board mod. Really.

Now, just because I'm pissed off, I will speculate on why some people might have voted YT's blog down -- which I would not have done myself. First of all, as should be obvious to many posters here, the moderation policy at YT's own forum has been unfair in the extreme and downright bizarre in some cases. Does he give a fuck? I would say no. Does he realize that he has generated some general antipathy with these actions? Secondly, it has become increasingly clear that some people are turned off by YT's professional activist schtick. The 11th of the month idea, which had been bantered about at 911blogger, was seized by him and refashioned into his own "brand" -- something he allegedly "spends as many as a hundred hours a week working on. " (WTF? Work smarter, not harder, dude. Seriously, what can he possibly be doing for 2.5 full-time jobs?) This was an idea that was intended to be viral and grass-roots -- not one person's personal destiny.

Edit: Just to kontinue my kvetch a little further, I wonder if the blog-author-snit types as a group have any overlap with the "vote some people -- like Kevin Barrett -- down regardless of topic" group. Ya think?