San Francisco Bay Guardian Endorses Sheehan Over Pelosi

Apparently everyone and their grandmothers are getting kicked off DU (right AND left) , except Iraq warmongers , zealous Zionists, Israelfirsters. Skinner has completely lost his way , we may as well blow his popsicle stand for good!

Check it out :

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/792

"Zionist Imposed Internet Etiquette
All truth passes through three stages . . .

First, it is ridiculed.

Second, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

--Arthur Schopenhauer,
German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

We're entering stage two:

A year ago I joined the forum Liberal Underground.

I don't dwell on the Israeli/Palestinian issue because it's not something that dominates my priorities - the Iraq war and labor are my pet issues (I protested in DC '05) - but I saw a group of pro-Zionist campaigners with an obvious agenda in the forum, squatting like basilisks with tongues at the ready, really distorting the facts whenever Israel came up, and since there was no dissenting opinions rising to the challenge I took them on.

I was very soon labeled an anti-Semite and banned. All I did was state the facts. This was an education for me.

About a month ago I joined the forum Democratic Underground and in the Israeli/Palestinian forum I found the same thing going on, a sort of propaganda campaign to put Israel in the best light and the Palestinians in mud, so I politely and firmly contradicted the nonsense with backed-up facts.

Here again I was called an anti-Semite and banned. I realized that I'd been baited into violating some very strict and narrow rules applying to that forum.

A violation of these rules will get you banned:

1. NO links to Whatreallyhappened or any sites on an Internet hate site list that's 149 pages long.
2. NO posting that AIPAC (or other Jewish orgs) exercises undue influence in Congress or on our foreign policy.
3. NO saying that the attack on the USS Liberty was deliberate.
4. NO calling someone a "blind supporter" of Israel, a conservative, or an Israeli-apologist.

I posted an article by Charlie Reese, one of my favorite columnists who's critical of Israel's policies and the Iraq war, by way of LewRockwell.com, and the post was deleted with the warning that LewRockwell was a bigoted site and Reese a rightwing conservative, both unsupportable claims IMO.

Reese has some conservative views, but in many ways he's on the left and progressive. Labels don't work with him.

The restrictions I listed are accurate and spelled-out in the forum rules, and are also based on comments made by the forum moderator (Lithos).

I don't see how any meaningful, useful debate can take place under these restrictions, and what's too bad is that DU is one of the largest and most active boards on the net. Oh well.

Then I discovered a site called Prosemiteundercover.

It's made up of banned and active members of both Liberal Underground and DU, along with Israelis, and their gig is to read, post and archive every anti-Zionist, Israel-critical post on sites like DU, then go on an e-mail campaign to alert and complain to the mods and demand the posts be deleted and the poster banned.

They participate under different usernames and bait the posters that are critical of Israel, hoping to goad them into a hot response that'll get them banned.

This kind of covert intellectual Jihadism can definitely contribute to mistrust and resentment of pro-Israel Jews in general. But your take is correct IMO, the majority of Jews are reasonable and straightforward, you just have this fanatical and mendacious minority that suffer from cognitive dissonance and anger issues who exercise a disproportionate influence on public discourse and effectively poison the atmosphere.

While anti-Israel criticism on Liberal U. is non-existent in the face of the Israel-firster squatters, on DU in the Israeli/Palestinian forum there is critcism, but it's restricted to following a narrow and channelized corridor.

And the inability to bring up a range of subjects, facts and events that are inter-related to honest criticism of Israel hog-ties open discussion. Some stridently pro-Israel posters at DU have had their posts deleted and been banned for straying outside the strict rules themselves, many of them landing at Prosemite Underground.

This might be merely an attempt by the mod there (Lithos) and the Skinner to maintain the appearance of neutrality, but the fact remains that the majority of banned posters and deleted comments are from those critical of Israel, and the Prosemite Underground (and doubtless other) e-mails and alerts are still read and obviously acted upon by the mod and admin.

All this will backfire on those little nazis - a storm is brewing and when it hits, things are going to get ugly."