[[[This was a misunderstanding on my part — Attaturk was being facetious. Comments which seemed directed at me apparently were not. I apologize for the misunderstanding.]]]

Spotted Propaganda (1): Thursday, March 29, 2012 (includes Michael-Cavlan-issue-related UPDATE) — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Zj2KakUZYyE/S_VTrOW4oVI/AAAAAAAACzg/lVLAwOz0fno/s1600/BatmanProp.jpg

In my first class on my first day of college, Professor Hollingsworth assigned us to figure out what the newspaper reporter’s point of view was in a story picked at random. It was a valuable lesson. At first, everyone resisted. We’d been taught that reporters are unbiased. But every story can be told in an infinite number of possible wordings, so the writer must decide, must choose how to word his story, from the first line on.

Thus, news reports don’t exactly just tell us what happened. Through their choice of words, they try to influence us into seeing things the way they want us to see them. Media try to manipulate us into supporting their particular political agendas.

I began writing this column in my head, taking notes on scrap paper to CBS’s overnight Up To The Minute report last night, because each story [of course!] had a dishonest political slant to the Right.

I came to FireDogLake.com yesterday morning planning to begin this Diary with reviews of those news reports and the coverage I’d heard on CBS overnight. Then, I started reading an FDL report on the “Home” page, the top left column’s first of the “Latest Blogs,” what might be called the “front page of Section B.” And what a shocking disappointment! I thought I was reading MSNBC or Current!

I was (it seems) reading someone who listens to them, without realizing that they’re playing us. Over here at MyFDL, people are less naïve. Diarists here have been calling policies on the far-Right “Fascist” for quite a while, even when they come from Democrats. Here we can tell the small-d democrats from the large-D “Democrats.”

Yesterday, and it’s probably still up, there was a promoted story on this site purporting that African Americans and Gays should allow themselves to be tricked into politically supporting a candidate on the far Right. But when I pointed out just two actual far-Right policies endorsed by the politician mentioned – whom the column props up as if he were an actual Liberal “small-d democrat” – I got a lashing from … (shall we say) status quo defenders. http://firedoglake.com/2012/03/28/and-the-world-will-be-as-one/

It would be hypocritical for me to go pointing to the crookedness in the coverage shown on ABCNNBCBS, Fox, Current, MSNBC, and LinkTV (yes, even Link!) in recent days, while just letting Right-wing deception pass here at FDL without a word. I guess I won’t try commenting over there anymore if I can help it. Some may have flagged my comment, or worse.

But their apparent candidate has said things and taken actions against Gays and Blacks that could and should rightly be considered Hate Speech and Hate Crimes, if said and done by Republicans. Their man has taken advantage of the fact that he’s a “large-D Democrat,” using that leverage and his office and charisma to drag this country much further to the Right than a Republican President could; because Congressional Democrats would stand up to oppose some things that Republicans do, but they oppose nothing from this politician, no matter how Right-wing and repressive his policies get.

By now you realize of whom I speak. But I can’t tell you how distressing it is for me to see how many people are doing the sheep thing over there, which is after all here. That story running here at FDL claims that Blacks and Gays should unite to support a candidate who’s working against their own best interests.

I gave FDLers there two true examples of harmful far-Right policies from their apparent candidate. But instead of stating them in the way MSNBC and Current do, I stripped the trickery away, and laid out those policies in just the way they’ve already been laid bare here at MyFDL so many times.

Let me tell you, those people over there just do not want to hear from the Left! They don’t want to hear anything from the Left, whether it’s true or not! They’re ready to squash a voice from the Left like a bug! Just because I opposed their apparent candidate, and gave true reasons for that opposition, I was called a hater and a troll, and it was said that I shouldn’t be tolerated.

This outrageous abusive behavior may shed light on the banning of Michael Cavlan: If the same people over there who attacked my comment and attacked me personally just because I’m on the Left, well if they realized how radical Michael is, then they might well have gone after him too. I wonder if the records show that they did. They lied about me and wanted me banned, just because I’m a dissenter.

It’s sad. Bleepin’ sleepin’ sheep. Prominent. Here. Baaahh!! You know what, I’ll have to tell you about CBS’s oopses another time, and even LinkTV’s. This may be more important, what’s now happening in-house. So, I’m here to defend my comment, and to defend my right to make comments to the Left of President Obama without being called names that do not apply.

I’m here to ask that I not be banned, at least not until one day after I get my Social Security check, when I’ll hopefully be able to afford a flash drive to store my Intellectual Property from FDL. The last time I asked not to be banned until I have enough to buy a flash drive, some well-meaning commenter pointed out that flash drives with lots of space can be bought for as little as $8. I’m sure the commenter didn’t realize how irrelevant and cruel it is to say that to someone on Social Security.

I’m here to defend myself against the baseless accusations, and hopefully draw attention to something quite undemocratic that is going on around here – undemocratic, though many Democrats may prefer it. I’m here to defend myself against false charges; and to suggest that it’s not right to call someone names because they disagree with you. But regardless of that lack of ethics, when you call me names that do not apply, you are not telling the truth.

I’m here to defend myself against that proposed ban. So, I’ll defend what I said and what I think. I had hoped we were done with this. Whether you call it the Stockholm Syndrome, the Ostrich Syndrome, or whether you just think you’ve already got the solution in this charlatan pretending to be a Progressive; blocking out dissenting opinions only serves one so far.

I would like to hear from those who made the false accusations. I’d like to hear them comment on that behavior, in the light of this post. I would like for the Diarist to defend that apparent electoral position taken in the article, instead of relying on a posse of lying attackers. (I’m not saying you sicked them on me, Attaturk.) I think I just made legitimate points which I’ll further clarify below. I do, though, know that my conclusions can upset people who haven’t thought the issues through that far yet.

StonyPillow: President Obama’s Department of Justice proposed – and Bank Of America accepted – an agreement to pay off 200,000 Black and Hispanic homeowners whom Countrywide (since bought out by BOA) cheated out of their homes based solely on race… How much to pay? Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama proposed paying them $335 million dollars. That’s just $1,675 per house, for houses worth 100 times that much!

And Bank of America has already sold many of the houses at tremendous profit. And instead of having wealthy Bank of America (Joe Biden’s top contributor) pay the people whose homes were taken away through Racial Discrimination the proper amount they were due, instead of doing the moral thing and paying Black people exactly what those homes were worth, instead the Administration proposed helping Bank of America rip them off based on their race.

Why does the Barack Obama Administration commit such Hate Crimes against Black homeowners? Well, there’s the fact that Bank of America has supported Joe Biden his whole political life. Biden owes BOA, and so does Obama: BOA helped Obama buy the Presidency: In 2008, Bank Of America donated more than 3 times as much money to Barack Obama’s campaign as it did to any other candidate, except Mitt Romney. BOA has bought them off!

The attempted theft of houses from 200,000 minority homeowners, in my opinion, is a Hate Crime. These people were robbed specifically because of their ethnicity! The Judge didn’t let Obama and Holder and Bank Of America get away with that crime either, stealing all those Black homeowners’ houses!

The Judge threw it back in Obama’s face – rejected it on “transparency issues!” That means Bribery! I would never ever support a candidate who endorses stealing over $100,000 apiece from 200,000 people based merely on the color of their skin. That, StonyPillow, does not make me a “troll.” I think accepting such a candidate shows naïveté at best. For a Black person to accept such a candidate would be, I think, self-hating.

Ruth Calvo: President Obama’s position on Gays is well known: He says that Gays are unequal and don’t deserve equal rights. He is officially “evolving” toward believing that Gays deserve more rights. If Gays give him money and votes, his opinion may evolve further on exactly how many Human Rights they do deserve.

That’s my understanding of the President’s stated position on how to keep Gays down. Whatever his exact wording, saying words with that meaning is [in my opinion] disgusting Hate Speech. I will never ever support a candidate who endorses discrimination against Gays or other minority groups. Ruth, that does not make me a “hate[r].” I think accepting such a candidate shows naïveté at best. For a Gay person to accept such a candidate would be, I think, self-hating.

Ruth, it is particularly problematic for me that you call me a hater. I published my first anti-hate editorial (against the Death Penalty) in 1972. I don’t know how fervently you’ve campaigned against Hate, or how long. The Ku Klux Klan tried to hold a rally in our Florida city in 1990, and I went out, demonstrated, and confronted the Klansmen face to face. Did you?

I spent a lot of time, years actually, gently teaching colors-wearing Nazi “skinheads” simple lessons about rainbow consciousness: Everybody deserves rights. Do you know what colors-wearing means? Biker gangs and other gangs wear “colors,” something of a gang uniform, insignias and so on. This is especially prevalent among Racist gangs. Underground biker bars in Florida have signs saying “No Colors” because they don’t want rival gangs to fight there.

Amid racial tensions on Florida’s West Coast in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tampa’s artists’ ghetto Ybor City, where I lived in a performance gallery, was the hippest place in the state. Everybody there was afraid of “the skinheads.” But my partner Ray and I let the bands that they liked practice and sometimes play shows in our place. Most of the guys in the Nazi club were 16 and 17. The weren’t really political – I think somebody older from outside their group was telling them their politics.

These guys were not from Tampa, much less the artists’ colony Ybor City. They were from Hudson, Brooksville, Dade City, out in the sticks. They were country boys. They may have been poor or abused. They likely had very ignorant and hateful parents. They are not bad people. Somebody needed to talk to them, somebody from out in the sticks.

So they’d been taught by whomever supplied their politics that hippies and Blacks are wrong. And then they came down to Ybor City, and nobody would even let them in the door except the longhair [me] and my Cape Verdean partner, who looked Black to them. I developed a rapport with them. I developed a following among them. Most of them left their Racist club after meeting Ray and me. But it took a lot of time and effort. You lie when you call me a hater. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2010/06/29/senator-byrds-death-made-me-think-of-klansmen-i-have-known/

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=d000000090&type=P&sort=A&cycle=2008

http://crooksandliars.com/richard-rj-eskow/335-million-bank-settlement-good-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/21/bank-of-america-countrywide-settlement_n_1163208.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/business/judge-rejects-sec-accord-with-citi.html?pagewanted=all

And finally, if you thought I was a hater and a troll because I mentioned details about what President Obama’s thugs do to the racial and social underclasses and dissidents in his puppet regimes, well, you should probably keep up with what he’s doing, since you’re willing to lie to defend him. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to a heroic woman in Yemen, for opposing the ODS – Obama’s Death Squads. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-to-tawakkul-karman-for-resisting-obama-saleh-massacres-of-peaceful-protesters-premeditated-murders-democracy-suppression/

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/02/26/urgent-demand-president-obama-stop-murdering-bahrainis-with-poison-gas-so-people-wont-compare-him-to-hitler/

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/03/15/video-of-slave-children-afl-cio-seiu-cwa-sell-out-workers-endorse-candidate-who-supports-slavery/

http://gay.americablog.com/2012/03/tony-blair-refuses-to-defend-gays-being.html

If we vote to go to the far Right, we will go to the far Right. And if we follow Obama to the far Right, the Government and thugs will crack down on Blacks and Gays.

[[[ADDITION: See Comments 7 & 12, below]]]