Politics

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Not unless (a) there is some good reason to believe that the politician condoned the behaviour and (b) it has some bearing on the politician's actions in his or her political role.

Most people believe that an extra-marital affair is "something untoward". If the husband of a politician had a fling, is it proper material for public discussion?

In general no but...
Yes if that politician portrays herself as a family person and touts family values. For example the case of Peter Robinson's wife. Of course she was also a politician but say she wasn't?

southsiderosie wrote: »

I think a lot of politics regulars (myself included) have their hobby horses, whether immigration, republicanism, libertarianism, or ragging on a particular political party. And I think the mods are generally consistent when it comes to stepping back and letting threads evolve, even if it is clear from the start who is going to jump into the conversation and what they are going to say. Whether that is always a good thing or not is perhaps the topic of another thread.

That said, it seems as if there are an awful lot of posters these days who think that throwing up a bunch of links and/or information with no critical analysis or coherent question makes for a somehow legit OP. The Gilmore IRA thread was a case in point:

Ill give you i mentioned Gilmore but just as one might mention Gerry Adams to flag PIRA or some who mention "Sinn Féin/IRA".

a whole lot of dates, ONE link to a wiki page,

the dates were in chroniologicval order and given so people could not say "When was that" later.
You are WRONG about the wiki page. I provided a reference to a published source and gave about fifteen or twenty page references from that. I had to paint the Official IRA timeline first.

and no real discussion points.

The evolution of the Official IRA and Workers Party associated people into leadership of Labour and into the Oireachtas is the discussion.

I think it is a perfectly legitimate - and interesting - question to ask if, when, and how do we hold politicians accountable for their past political affiliations, and this is a particularly relevant question in Ireland. However, the OP for the thread in question just read (if you could actually read through it, which I couldn't) as a poorly put-together laundry list, and I was surprised that the thread went on as long as it did.

It was a chronologically ordered and sourced list of how Official Sinn Fein were involved in union control and Media Manipulation

I don't think that it shows political bias to demand that posters 1) craft an OP in a way that presents an issue clearly, takes a position, and provides some rationale for that position,

No it does not show bias to complain about style. what shows bias is not being able to critique Labour or WP or OIRA to the level that SF and FF are. I would do what you asked and had already begun to do so but the thread is now locked.

2) provides links and content analysis of those links,
[/quot e]

I provided some of the links later in the thread. It is only about o tenth of the references I have. I'd get around to it if the thread was opened and I was allowed to post to it.
I usually cover things to a fairly extensive degree. I apologise if my ponderous and pedantic style is off putting to you but i would think I am not short on analysis or references if and when I get the chance.

and 3) focuses on political attacks, not personal or familial behavior (unless that is the focus of the thread,

In the Gilmore case it was related to the thread because the Official Sinn Fein Marxist background of Gilmore and his wife was 180 degrees away from their position today. People can and do change their political views, poachers become gamekeeper but
- it should be made quite clear by them that they renounce their prior involvement in the thing they now oppose e.g. reject the opposition to people becoming personally wealthy to regulation of incomes of the wealthy and to taxing them down to the level of non wealth people as socialists would do
- The Party which represents them should not be making pronouncements about greed of friends and family making money on land when they are doing the same thing

but this is a fringe issue to that of A the OIRA media control, bombings, forgery and other illegal activities and the background of people involved in that control and what effect that has on society as a whole. there is also the issue of B the bias in which A presented as compared to "golden circles" and "Provos"

I think the complaint in this case is particularly ill-founded given that the standards of OPs in the Politics forum in general have dropped somewhat over the last few months.

so now it is back to a personal criticism of my standard and style of posting and not about A or B?

While this is not surprising given all of the interest in the elections, I think the bar is relatively low, and if an OP doesn't meet the current threshold, then perhaps the problem lies with the poster and not with the moderation.

The actuall facts if you go and look will show upo the holes in that contention.
How many threads posted about Official IRA workers party and named names of people in the Labour Movement or the Labour party?

Care to list say ten posts from every week ( excluding any made by you or me )

How many discussed Fianna Fáil in relation to corruption, manipulation, greed etc. and Sinn Féin in relation to terrorism, forgery etc.

excluding any made by you or me Im sure there are far far more.

Care to test my contention? go ahead show I am wrong and there is just and many posts mentioning Rabbitte or Gilmore or Trade union leaders or other ex official SF/Workers party people in a critical way as there are about Lawlor Haughey ( both of whom are dead) Callelly Bankers or builders who were friends of FF etc. ?

That is one of my central points[/]
and it is easy to check.

I may be wrong but my feeling is I am not.

All we need do is have two people read through each thread and post
1 how many messages
2 how many critical of FF or SF
3 how many critical of labour

You can add in GP FG as well if you like.

I think the picture would be clear and unequivocal but Ill admit I don't know.

Care to test it?

yekahS wrote: »

I am honestly still at a complete loss as to what point ISAW is trying to make.

I think it would be useful if you forced yourself to make your point in a maximum of, say, 6 sentences, because as it is it is extremely difficult to follow what your complaint/point is with the meandering nature of your posts.

People have the same problems with Chomsky

Here is how I expressed it elsewhere:

Why are representatives one political party not allowed to be criticised and have family members deemed off limits but the families of representatives of other political party's are fair game?

Why should I be banned for pointing that out to posters?

i was posting about a culture of moderators and non moderators alike who line up SF FF and others as whipping boys and can't accept from the high moral ground that the same argument can be applied to Labour e.g. associations to Official IRA, Union control, media control, Marxist Bolshevist structures. Gerry Adams can be mentioned with the IRA but Eamon Gilmore Pat Rabitte or P D Rossa can't! FF and SF TD's can be catagorised as all belonging to a culture of corruption or bank robbers and but people with a Workers Party background involved in gun running or forgery indeed of printing their own money can't!

It reminds me of leftists who supported free speech "except for Nazis," and bit by bit others who don't agree with them are tarred with the "nazi associations" brush

To ban someone for how they post is tantamount to saying "it isn't what your argue but your accent/skin colour/religion/ sexual orientation".

I mean if you are going to become a style nazi where does it stop?

I accept i have an aggressive style but which devoted some time to pedantic analysis and deconstruction and then attacks the argument but I don't attack the person. If I am going to be banned for an unwritten rule about "aggressive style" will you progress to banning "boring posters" or posters that post to much?

By the way as I tend to take up a contrary position to those attacking the IRA SF FF Catholics or whoever is this weeks whipping boy, it is all the more likely that it tends to become ISAW posting replies to several people attacking me. I only recently learned how to multi quote but the result will either be lots of posts by me or huge multiquote posts by me. Am I to be banned for posting too much?


Im suggesting there is a "whipping boy " culture developing where people are singled out by a "lynch mob" mentality.

I'm not saying this is planned by moderators but that some of them are affected by it and it involves everyone.

When such a thing happens it may well be that someone they lynch is guilty but the problem with lynchings is sooner or later someone is lynched who isn't properly tried
or their family or anything connected to them is also brought in. SF are derided for connections with the IRA, FF are derided for all being corrupt and anyone voting for them or supporting them is either corrupt or a fool.)

I witness the manifestation of this mindset in the way the church, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin etc. are threatened by high moral ground groups.

In the politics forum [my opinion] I would have thought Fine Gael people would be more likely to adopt this mind set [given church connections and "law and order party" ]this mindset but this seems to me to be [my opinion] a Labour element.

What I home to clarify is fair level standards.

bonkey wrote: »

I never suggested that you necessarily did.

I note in passing, however, that your choice of wording here doesn't rule out the possibility that this is, in fact, what you did.

If it was what I did it was not the main or only intention nor. As I had flagged in advance that I expected people to berate me it would be wrong toi say I din't expect it would happen.

Edit: I use "not necessarily " usually to indicate that even if true it is not sufficient to prove something. Also, another poster of similar thinking to me might post the same thing with or without having a certain intention so the intent isn't important for the main issue i.e. why I posted it is separate to whether the argument in post is valid sound and reliable.

I see. I'm assuming that you mean the level of reaction might be lessened by people being given a heads-up that you are aware that your comments might be seen as imflammatory.

By people just being aware I expected something to happen. They might be increases or lessened. I would expect lessened. It might be consciously contrived done be conspiracy or unconscious.

On has to wonder, therefore, why you choose to take the path with a greater risk of antagonism.

I already stated why/how I used the name "Gilmore " in the title. I expected a topic of OIRA would "draw flak like a magnet" I think is the phrase used abouyt Orr in catch 22. It did.

A conspiracy against you? Come now...that's all a bit cloak-and-dagger, don't you think?

Not when people label me as part of conspiracy when in fact I posted all on my own bat. Ill admit I heard of the book about a year and a half or so ago and bought two copies.

I'd hope that this is merely idle speculation on your part, and not in any way shape or form an allegation against other users in the absence of evidence.

If I had the evidence I would present it. I have shown how a "mindset" can be tested for existance. It is sufficient to show that . it isn't necessary to show collusion.

bonkey wrote: »

How does a distribution of what posters choose to talk about add to your case that there is double-standards being shown by moderators?

Read my posts. I suggested double standards by moderaters and posters alike buying into media "socialization" ( as Chomsky calls it - see my last post). Posters don't have the direct power over other posters though.

The distribution of posts show I would posit that ther is a heavy criticism of FF or SF and moderate criticism of Labout. SF are describes in terms of a "terrorist" PIRA past but Labour aren't.

Propaganda-
Manufacturing Consent: last paragraph but read the third and fourth paragraph before that one. beginning "For stories that are useful, ..."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html

In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests. This should be observable in dichotomized choices of story and in the volume and quality of coverage... such dichotomization in the mass media is massive and systematic: not only are choices for publicity and suppression comprehensible in terms of system advantage, but the modes of handling favored and inconvenient materials (placement, tone, context, fullness of treatment) differ in ways that serve political ends.

yekahS wrote: »

So do you think its the moderators job to try and create some kind of balance whereby you have a quota of posters who are pro/anti: FF/SF/FG/Lab/OIRA etc.?

Its not their job to regulate public sentiment.

I agree but we should be aware of outing people as like me as "nutjobs".
I submit if my stats were produced for more politics threads the trend would emerge.
One would expect an anti government weighting but SF are anti government and they are ostracised as PRA but OIRA are not and FG are not promoted as much as public opinion of them being as big as FF were suggests.

This got me into looking at the old media control thing. Which led me to the Book about NUJ control and stickies and I saw this in parallel with attacks on Hanafin and Callelly when ones on Gilmore were sidelined.

It got me to thinking abut what people had written on it

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html

Last para but see the two four paras earlier beginning
"For stories that are useful..."
Manufacturing consent - Propaganda

In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests. This should be observable in dichotomized choices of story and in the volume and quality of coverage... such dichotomization in the mass media is massive and systematic: not only are choices for publicity and suppression comprehensible in terms of system advantage, but the modes of handling favored and inconvenient materials (placement, tone, context, fullness of treatment) differ in ways that serve political ends.



http://www.theconnextion.com/disinformation/disinfo_product.cfm?ProdAutoID=4107&CatID=93

found a similar online version of the first chapter
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

He [George Orwell in the intro to his book Animal Farm] talks a little, only two sentences, about the institutional structure. He asks, why does this happen? Well, one, because the press is owned by wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public. The other thing he says is that when you go through the elite education system, when you go through the proper schools in Oxford, you learn that there are certain things it’s not proper to say and there are certain thoughts that are not proper to have. That is the socialization role of elite institutions and if you don’t adapt to that, you’re usually out. Those two sentences more or less tell the story.

When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, "nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure." Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.

for in and out groups read this
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their
society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people
have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled,
customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically these
followers have personalities featuring:
1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in
their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.

By the way this isn't my academic field. I'm just interested in the subject.

I think media like Boards.ie are a way which Chomsky and others due to their ignorance of potential of technology didn't identify as a way to break out of this control if we are aware of it.

bonkey wrote: »

And again, your wording doesn't rule out the possibility that provocation was at least part of your intent.

I was of the belief that the post would be provocative or solicit anti FF anti Sf and pro WP Labour people to post. That does not mean I posted it to attack them or to prove they would attack me.

Lest you be concerned I'm trying to trap you here...I accept fully there is a distinction between intending a consequence and knowing it would come about.

I don't like referring to people's personal lives if they aren't directly involved and I certain had no intention of personally attacking Gilmore's wife. I respect her and the job she does and that she operated in a legal manner and I have stated that before. One issue was that if one mentioned her they would be attacked but it seemed it was okay to mention Ivor Callely's family or Hanafin's family. Posters would be primarily defending her and saying she was not involved in the Gilmore case but linking the others to FF. i was saying this is part of a wider motif where FF/SF and the like are attacked and Labour are praised or attacked less. I wondered if the media control background of the Workers Party OIRA etc. had and relation to this.

The Politics mods could readily predict the creation of this thread once your most recent thread was closed....but we didn't intend for it to be created. We didn't close the thread to try and provoke you to start this thread. It was not our main aim. It was not a side aim. It was no part of our intent.

Prove it! Can you show where you or any other mod made that prediction before the event?

It is very easy to make predictions after the thing happens. rettofitting with " could readily predict" does not count.

To that end, it concerns me that twice now you've worded around your intent leaving the door open that at least in part your intent was to provoke people.

And given you above say yo are not trying to trap me your unsupported opinions and concerns should be if import because?

You're clearly an intelligent person, with a good grasp of the english language...and it worries me when such people shy away from making clear and unambiguous statements about their intention(s).

I have been quite clear.
I don't resort to ad hominem unless others attack me
I am quite suspicious about an anti FF anti SF pro Labour mindset operating
Posting about the Official IRA history of Labour People might well provoke such people into responding by attacking me as I expected but the intention of the thread is not about the central issue of attacking such people.

Yes, its quite clear that the flak drawn was not about the OIRA, but rather about your inclusion of Gilmore. Which is exactly my point...unless you wanted to associate Gilmore (and specifically Gilmore) with the OIRA for some reason, then one has to wonder why you chose the option which would draw (the most) flak.

I used a well know name
Maybe i should have used Rabbitte but he didn't join the Officials till after the Student Union days.
I am happy to post a slew of other names mentioned in print. I was surprised at some myself that I knew from the NUJ but might be people with the same name so I have to be careful about what I post.
I would have thought others like Stagg or Mac Manus or Michael would also draw flak I believe they opposed going in with FF and I'm not sure about earlier OIRA links.

This is the problem for me. I see someone who's able to understand and even predict reactions to posts, and clearly able to argue their point eloquently when they choose....who then goes and starts a thread in close to the most "flammable" manner I can imagine, and complains about being the injured party when it all catches fire.

I'm not upset at being attacked. I'm upset I had to post anything personal about someone not directly in politics and I'm only complaining because a different set of standards apply to the people posting to the degree that the majority of posters play down one party and play up another.

I'm honestly trying to figure out why you didn't start the thread in a manner less likely to cause aggravation.

I honestly regret I didn't now.

I saw no allegations of you being part of a conspiracy, nor to my knowledge were any reported. Could you report them so I can review them, please?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=70598636&postcount=12

Is this where FFail are taking this election run up when we need serious resolution to serious issues?

message 25 :Directly on political parties monitoring an replying to this thread

FF in particular need to wake up to the fact that Civil war politics mean nothing to young voters and the same young people have no sense of loyalty to them.

Your comments weren't about a mindset, ISAW, they were about people communicating with each other behind the scenes and posting or not posting based on those communications.

they were about both. I cant prove there were communications between other people.
I can ask you if you had such communications behind the scenes?
Did you?
I can also ask if you are not a support er of the Labour Party?
Are you now or were you ever involved with Labour WP, DL etc. ?
LOL you make me sound like Mc Carthy

Your profile says you live in Switzerland. that is about all it says. maybe you are involved in the Labour movement there?

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

that sounds fair and it could be tested.

Did the same level of antio FF anti SF postings and low criticiam of Lab and no discussion of OIRA exist before 2007 and the bust?

Will criticism of Labour increase when they are in government?

bonkey wrote: »

How does a distribution of what posters choose to talk about add to your case that there is double-standards being shown by moderators?

On double standards you say

your wording doesn't rule out the possibility that provocation was at least part of your intent.

so you can't prove I did it for that reason. You have no evidence but you still alledge I did it for that reason. or that you are suspicious

However If I alledge that I have suspicion s about people conspiring against me or even unconsciously indulging in "groupthink" you suggest that I had better prove these allegations.

Can you prove I posted for the reason you suggest? If you don't have to then why should I have a different standard to attain?

bonkey wrote: »

. Being in Switzerland and removed from Irish media, I'm also not highly likely to be susceptible to the Irish media.

Id have to disagree with this. In fact you are part of the "Irish media". Particularly you are a highly influential part of evolving new media and that is significant. That is in fact possibly the main reason why I brought up the issue - that opinion leaders or media people are metacognitive and aware of what media is and does. You should be aware that you are affecting opinion. - Even by saying "I am not going to be influenced" you influence opinion. I suggest you read the "what makes the mainstream media mainstream" piece.

P.S. on my own style - I use "possibly" and "not necessarily" in an exploitative non committal way. this may be to do with my background in science writing. I am loathe to say something is definite unless I am totally sure. While I was suspicious of you, I believe now and am happy to admit that I was wrong about that. However, I am not totally sure other mods or others didn't discuss me and freely admit some paranoia about it. The feedback/dispute process however seems quite fair. I also think it is important that people like me ( i.e. pains in the neck ) test such processes and cause them to be refined.