Banned for two weeks in [US] Politics for valid political views, IMO

Amerika

I was banned and accused of misrepresenting facts. This is false. I presented additional facts to the investigation. My take was Comey was answering to the parsing of words… particularly ‘wiretapping’ and that Trump was under investigation by Obama’s DOJ and/or his FBI at the time. That there was an actual crime by the leaking of information and questioned why the investigation came about in the first place.

Here are a number of valid media reports on the Congressional investigation that supports my position.

https://spectator.org/yes-obama-did-investigate-trump/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/leakgate-finds-its-joe-mccarthy-1490137325
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/21/james-comeys-donald-trump-investigation-overshadow/
http://circa.com/politics/fbi-probe-of-donald-trump-and-russia-during-election-yielded-no-evidence-of-crimes

The "offensive" post:

Oh, come on. This is what is important… the parsing of words? :rolleyes:

Bottom line… What we found out from the hearing was the core claim underlying Trump’s tweets is true... That people acting on the authority of Obama opened an investigation into Trump’s campaign. Then someone criminally leaked information to news outlets in an attempt to derail his election.

Why was Comey investigating the Trump campaign in the first place? Where did Comey get the idea to investigate the Trump campaign? We know the Hillary Clinton campaign also had contact with the Russians. Was there also an investigation into her campaign? If not, why not. And most importantly... Who criminally leaked the information to news outlets? These are big questions that need to be answered.

One thing we can agree on, and that’s Trump and the newspapers that printed the story agree… Obama was investigating him.

Obama's hands appear to be all over this. Whether they can find any proof that leads back to him is another story. But one thing they apparently got wrong is... If you're going to pull off these kind of dirty deeds you better damn well make sure your gal wins.

Moderator reasoning for ban:

To be clear, you weren't banned for your opinions, nor for the level of popularity you have with other posters. You were banned for misrepresenting facts, which is prohibited in the forum charter. Had you not done that, you could have aired your opinions as freely as anyone else on the forum.

As moderators, we're trying to facilitate a good standard of debate. If we have a poster insisting black is white, the debate is dragged away from the topic at hand and into discussion into how that poster is twisting the facts. I'm sure you can see how disruptive this is.

To be clear, I was banned for my opinions, and nothing more, to anybody familiar with US Politics. I communicated with the moderator (Jeb) in a couple of PM's to explain, but to no avail. I am requesting a lifting of the 2 week ban, and any moderators be reprimanded for threatening a Permaban for honest and valid debate.

Suggestion: Please get a Moderator to deal with US Politics that has a diverse familiarity of our politics, other than what they read from the biased US liberal mainstream media.

Tokyo

Good evening Amerika,

I'll look into this for you. But before we go any further, have you attempted to resolve this with the moderator in question, as per the first step of the DRP process?

Amerika

mike_ie wrote: »

Good evening Amerika,

I'll look into this for you. But before we go any further, have you attempted to resolve this with the moderator in question, as per the first step of the DRP process?

Good afternoon Mike,

Thank you. Yes, I have communicated twice with the moderator in question to try and resolve the issue. The mod said my next step was to take my case here.

A...

Tokyo

Amerika, thank you for the confirmation - I'll look into this for you now. I'll ask you to be patient while I do so, to give the moderators a chance to fill me in on the details.

~Mike

Amerika

mike_ie wrote: »

Amerika, thank you for the confirmation - I'll look into this for you now. I'll ask you to be patient while I do so, to give the moderators a chance to fill me in on the details.

~Mike

Thank you. The problem we seem to have here on boards.ie moderation is the over reliance on the US liberal mainstream media in the US which are Democrat supporters and are bent on taking down Donald Trump. Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with only 32% believing they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. View like mine should not be punished just because they go against the group-think of the majority here.

Update:

It appears House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes confirmed in a press conference the post that earned me the ban regarding the inappropriate surveillance performed on Trump.

“So, first, I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,” Nunes said. He added, “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

“Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked,” Nunes said. “And fourth and finally, I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team,” he added.

“The House Intelligence Committee will thoroughly investigate surveillance and its subsequent dissemination to determine a few things that I want to read off,” Nunes said. He continued, “Who was aware of it? Why it was not disclosed to Congress? Who requested and authorized the additional unmasking? Whether anyone directed the intelligence community to focus on Trump associates? And whether any laws, regulations or procedures were violated.”


http://hotair.com/archives/2017/03/22/nunes-trump-transition-officials-were-under-surveillance-after-election/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtEz57_KZGk

Apparently the information I provided in my post was more true than the information the moderators used to level the ban against me.

Tokyo

Good evening Amerika,

I've spoken with the moderator in question, and have taken the time to look over both the forum charter, and the post and encompassing thread that led to this ban, and I'm afraid that I can't agree with your take on the situation in this instance.

The reason for which you earned a ban from the Politics forum hinges on the following statement:

Amerika wrote: »

Oh, come on. This is what is important… the parsing of words? :rolleyes:

Bottom line… What we found out from the hearing was the core claim underlying Trump’s tweets is true... That people acting on the authority of Obama opened an investigation into Trump’s campaign. Then someone criminally leaked information to news outlets in an attempt to derail his election.

However, the facts of the situation are that FBI Director James Comey's testimony is as follows:

SCHIFF: Director Comey, I want to begin by attempting to put to rest several claims made by the president about his predecessor, namely that President Obama wiretapped his phones. So that we can be precise, I want to refer you to exactly what the president said and ask you whether there is any truth to it.

First, the president claimed, quote, "Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism," unquote.

Director Comey, was the president's statement that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower a true statement?

COMEY: With respect to the president's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI. The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information that supports those tweets.

(the transcript of the hearing can be found here)

I agree that in any debate, each party is entitled to an opinion, and had you stated the above as your opinion, then we probably wouldn't be here right now. Unfortunately you stated it as fact - in fact, your statement was pretty much the polar opposite of what was actually stated in the hearing - which is in direct contravention of the Politics General Forum Charter and Guidelines, which clearly states:

Deliberately misleading posts or posters aiming to spread misinformation will be sanctioned. We do not expect posters to be experts in all areas, however, the onus is on all posters to fact check their information. If a poster is corrected, or information corrected in a thread, any poster who continues to relate misinformation as fact will be sanctioned.

Unfortunately this DRP is as cut and dried as they come in my opinion - the charter has a specific rule, you flouted that rule quite blatantly, and it was appropriate for the mods to action you for it. You weren't banned for expressing an opinion, the ban was put in place because you misrepresented the facts repeatedly (and derailed the thread in the process).

As for the length of the ban, looking at your record, it seems you have no less than 14 mod actions against your name, all in the Politics forum, prior to this one, which leads me to believe that (a) you are very much aware of the charter and what constitutes a breach of the rules, and (b) the issue lies with you rather than the entire mod team, and that's something that needs to be rectified.

As your previous ban was for one week, I feel that escalating your current ban to two weeks was an appropriate action by the mod team. I'd suggest using the time to reflect on your posting style in the politics forum, as the next ban will be substantially longer, possibly permanent.

As per the process here, if you accept the above, we can consider this as resolved. If not, then you are also welcome to request an admin to take a look at this, and his or her decision will be final. Please let me know which way you want to go with this.

~Mike

Amerika

Thank you, but what you failed to do was consider the opening to my post, which served as the basis for my contention.

Oh, come on. This is what is important… the parsing of words?

Bottom line… What we found out from the hearing was the core claim underlying Trump’s tweets is true... That people acting on the authority of Obama opened an investigation into Trump’s campaign. Then someone criminally leaked information to news outlets in an attempt to derail his election.

Parse
verb (used with object), parsed, parsing.
1. to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc.

Perhaps I wasn’t completely clear in the point I was making, although I thought I was clear. I then PM’d the mod to explain it further. I should not be banned because someone did not completely understand me. If anything I should have been asked to explain my point more clearly rather then immediately ban me... wrongly.

Here was my explanation to the mod

This hearing was a farce because it had to do with the parsing and semantics of words... particularly 'Wiretapping.'

According to Comey, we know surveillance of the Trump organization had been going on since July 2016. Who was president then? A president gets briefings of the goings on of the NSA. “The buck stops here" does not only apply to Republican presidents.

Wiretapping is a generic term for surveillance. In today’s age there is no need to actually wiretap phones of anybody as all communications can be digitally captured. That was clarified by Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer.

If we could look beyond someone who thinks you wipe clean an illegal bathroom server with a cloth, can we not look beyond an old guy using the term wiretapping to describe government covert surveillance of phones and other electronic communications? Apparently not.

The Republicans did the country a disservice in the questions to Comey. The Democrat on the committee, Shiff, gave a leading question to Comey about Trump’s tweet regarding the use of the wording ‘wiretapping.’

Comey responded ‘I have no information that supports those tweets.’

That was in regard to the wording of wiretapping, IMO. The Republicans should have made Comey elaborate. Was he merely commenting on the wording of wiretapping, or was he saying that the FBI didn’t investigate the communications or the computer server connected to Trump Tower which was reported in Circa News? Was he saying that his investigation didn't intercept any of Trump’s communications? They should have asked Comey if his agents ever saw Trump’s communications in the course of that investigation and if they were kept/archived, which might have been against the law since apparently there was no illegal or deceitful purpose acting in collusion with the enemy. Comey probably would have declined to answer the questions, but that would have shed some light on his categorical denial to Shiff’s leading question regarding the use of ‘wiretapping’ in Trumps tweets.

Therefore I do not consider the issue resolved and request an admin to take a look at this.

Edit... And I was wrong to just accept many of those 14 mod actions, which you should have noticed some were reversed, as I now see they count against you as time goes by. And how long do those mod actions remain as part of your record. Shouldn't they get wiped off your record after several years and thousands of posts? Can I go back and fight them now, since apparently they will continue to haunt me forever more?

Tokyo

Ok Amerika,

I'm very much aware of the definition of parse, however that doesn't change my opinion in this instance. Your argument is that you can take an official statement, and 'read between the lines' to turn it on its heels, still doesn't detract from the fact that you presented a pretty much opposite opinion as fact.

I'll request that an admin jump in on this, to provide a second opinion.

dudara

I'm happy to review. I'll look into this later this evening. Please bear with me.

Amerika

mike_ie wrote: »

Ok Amerika,

I'm very much aware of the definition of parse, however that doesn't change my opinion in this instance. Your argument is that you can take an official statement, and 'read between the lines' to turn it on its heels, still doesn't detract from the fact that you presented a pretty much opposite opinion as fact.

I'll request that an admin jump in on this, to provide a second opinion.

No, I did not read between the lines, I watched the farce happen on TV in real time, and knew what was going on in the testimony by Comey, just like those journalists in some of the links I provided did. Can any moderator here claim, as I have that they actually watched Comey's testimony, and how he answered Shiff's leading (or should I say misleading) question?

dudara

Apologies for not getting to complete this review last night. I was wiped after work and deferred until this morning.

Amerika, in short, I have to agree with the mods and CMod. You were banned for the following statement.

What we found out from the hearing was the core claim underlying Trump’s tweets is true... That people acting on the authority of Obama opened an investigation into Trump’s campaign.

If you had voiced this as a personal opinion or belief, then we would have been fine. And a healthy discussion could have been had. However, at the time of posting there was no evidence in the public domain to support your statement of fact.

Drawing inferences between different pieces of information is not the same as finding evidence. Evidence is required for facts. Otherwise it remains a hypothesis. Please bear that in mind when posting in future.

There is no doubt that you are an active and engaged contributor to the Politics forum and I hope that you will remain so.

With respect to your question on previous bans/infractions etc, all actions are maintained on a poster's profile, even if they have expired. When a poster exhibits a pattern of behaviour, it can inform the mods decision. If a poster was previously troublesome, but has maintained a clean record for a period of time, that speaks well of them. If the poster has a consistent pattern over the last 6-12 months, then that is taken into account, as it is clear that they are not heeding the moderator warnings.