After a break, I spent a few hours touring DU off and on today. Disgusted is how I feel.

[Mika]

Seeing the gleeful pile-on against Venezuela and Cuba by mewling know-nothings has me considering removing this site from my Bookmarks Bar. It reads like f*cking Yahoo message boards.

I'll always respect and love the caring posters with a strong and well informed leftward bent, but this site has been corroded and warped like the Minneapolis I-35 bridge struts.

Not that it makes any difference whether or not I post here, but I've got better things to move forward on than to "discuss" the secret Swiss bank accounts of dictators {sic} Chavez and Castro and such pathetic FR type swill.

So fellow comrades, I'll cash this month's checks from Castro and Chavez and move along.

:sarcasm:



-

[Billy Burnett]

1. LOL. I was wondering how you make ALL of that money.

Damn!!11!! My checks from Chavez and Castro are a pittance compared to yours. ;) ;)

It has been in a long slow nosedive around here for a while. Maybe because the good ol' DU lefties quit posting?

Reconsider. Don't let the neanderthal a-holes get under your skin, although it's healthier to steer clear of LBN I do enjoy looking forward to your contributions here. Please don't disappoint. You've had a rough spell, and LBN isn't the warm and cozy place it used to be.

Don't get mad. Get even! :smoke:

[EFerrari]

2. My check is late AGAIN.

lol

I should know better than to even read LBN threads about Venezuela. It's the same five people repeating the same old material.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of stuff right here I haven't read yet. :)

[Billy Burnett]

3. It's like swatting at flies.

One of the things I just LOVE about LBN Cuba and Ven threads is when Judi Lynn just F-ing hammers them with posts laden with links and pictures(with commentary) and they buzz about with headspinning fury and never reading the links, of course.

I'll be sitting quietly at my mac and suddenly let out a roaring guffaw. Often, when that happens, Mrs B will ask "Judi posted a good one?" which always makes it even more amusing. Judi Lynn has fans that don't even read DU. LOL

DU is worth it's weight in gold just for those zingers alone.

[EFerrari]

4. Judi Lynn is great and hilarious. Another favorite of mine is

devilgrrl's The Ultimate Let's Make Shit Up About Hugo Chavez Thread from last Winter. :hi:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2378097

[Billy Burnett]

6. Check out DUer formercia's post #3 in this thread.

Just a hilarious response ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3635631

---

Posts in response to trollers like that are priceless.

[Judi Lynn]

8. You are certainly far too generous. I feel anything I could say would be inadequate as a response.

You can see they believe they've got a bloc working right, one capable of simply gibbering and hurling personal attacks at us day after day after day, with NO CONTENT other than venom, and eventually we'll all give up and leave.

What they don't seem to notice is that the number of DU'ers who have been researching, looking for news on Cuba, Haiti, Latin America is growing: there are more and more continually, whereas their group seems basically the same. It's the INFORMATION we find, the information available to people of good will, who take the time to read it, to look for it, to discuss it, to care about it, which gains their initial attention, and which often compels them to start reprocessing what they've been taught via popular myth all these years.

Our side is surely getting larger.

What about the crowds we can see on tv, or hearing about in articles, big, enthusiastic crowds which stuff themselves into places like the Riverside Church in New York to hear Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and into studio audiences of shows like the Daily Show, programs which don't even get a lot of publicity telling people who's coming on, and when: the crowds STILL fill up the place, and the programs are discussed broadly, with enthusiasm. These people have a growing circle of friends, admirers, enthusiasts right here in the States who abhor all our foreign policy regarding this hemisphere, who are well informed, far, far more people than anyone would have expected.

It's OUR kind of people who have something going on. Their side has personal attacks, terminal self-centeredness, a lack of identification with the human race, xenophobia, racism, and virulent fascist obsessions with controlling the world, subjugating others to their will. In the end, they're going to lose, as the world unites against their kind of destructive, greedy, murderous ill will, and contempt for people. How could they win? They have nothing worth while about them. Who the #### needs them, after all?
The world will be far better when they die off. They will not be replaced by new a-holes.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Don't go, Mika. Stay, and don't forget to sign up to get paid by Evo Morales, too!

Axis of evil dictators can be so generous!

I just took a look at one of those thread you mentioned before coming here. Good grief! Troll's picnic, I'm telling ya!

All the facts are on our side. That's why we are the ones who actually can provide links, add information, share information, or learn new information from the others of us, and they've got only their comical attitudes to bring to the table.

One of these days we are going to have a lot to celebrate together. Also remember, we are the ones who are going to laugh last, and laugh until we collapse in heaps. Our side will win, in time.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. I feel that way about a lot of topics

health care, militarism, education, the environment, not to mention the people who make uninformed blanket statements about religion.

Of the people who continual post statements in support of Latin American oligarchs, I suspect that a lot of them work for certain organizations that shall remain nameless.

[Peace Patriot]

9. DU is a wide open forum. Anyone may post. I like it that way. When one of these

ill-informed, ill-willed or paid agents posts their anti-left, anti-democracy, two-bit hit pieces on Chavez, Venezuela or the South American left, it's an opportunity to teach, and to provide information, not for the idiot poster or commenter--who generally don't want to become informed, and don't want to discuss viewpoints reasonably and with a basis in fact--but to OTHER people who may be seeking accurate information. Those of us who follow events in Latin America closely are providing a service for THEM--for those who wish to be informed, including many "lurkers" who are too shy or don't have time to post. It's generally useless to argue with anti-left posters. Their minds are closed. They have their propaganda and their purpose, and they almost never reply to a factual post and can't back up their propaganda points, because...they are propaganda. But OTHERS are being given information, and food for thought, and links for research, when we reply to these stupid, short, uninformative hit pieces.

Generally I like it this way--an open forum--although LBN has become something of a garbage pit of corpo/fascist 'news' spin. But even corpo/fascist 'news' monopoly articles can be analyzed and material addended in the comment section to help people understand how they are being manipulated.

I hope you stick around, Mika, for this purpose. You can't change a Bushwhack's mind. They have to find Jesus on their own. But you can help other people understand what they are reading.

[Judi Lynn]

10. You nailed it. The same people, who are the way you and I were, also, earlier,

do see things being discussed, focus on ideas never entertained, wonder about the information they've never heard before, and, in many cases, appear to be going off to do personal research, just as we did, when we suspected we didn't know as much as we thought after a few truths penetrated the propaganda fog we knew since childhood.

Once a person has actually awakened, there's no turning him/her back to the state of unknowing in which he/she had been living for so long.

It's possible these left-hating posters imagine they're making points someone will appreciate. What they're doing is bringing people in who will study the differences in tone, and in content among all the speakers, and come to their own conclusions.

[Billy Burnett]

11. I like that too.

:toast:

But, you have to admit that it can get frustrating to have the same crap thrown around by the same types of RWers.

I haven't had the time to figure out DU's journal functions. Maybe a journal containing info on the RW penetration into A.I., RSF, and HRW would be helpful to point readers to. Just an idea that might save some time and frustration when the usual BS is posted as fact.

In January I'll be bugging out of here for a while because I'm going away on a traveling job so there's little time for me to maintain a journal page like that.

Mika won't disappear from here, he's been through some trauma that takes quite a while to recover from, plus he really loves to enjoin the pedagogical interaction with all of the great lefties here. I empathize with the frustration with the redundancy of the accusations of being a paid proselytizer of a "SLAVE*" state. Especially when he has put so much of himself into helping the "SLAVES*". I've seen him in action, and people who agree and disagree with his politics almost instantly recognize that he has a heart of gold, so it's got to be tough to be accused by such infantile idiots.

(* - as that wingnut Sex Pistol repeats constantly)

[Judi Lynn]

12. The gusanos rotate in and out of here as if there's a revolving door!

As you've seen in other forums, they often burn themselves out fast, or get banned for threatening others, etc., and the ones who dig in and become cysts are relatively rarer, but they most surely exist here, as well.

Ideology appears to be more important than good common sense in those cases. That's how such a cold, self-centered class continues. A moment's reflection, time spent comparing information learned over the years, time engaged in study would compel them to move off their limited, childish world-view. You only have to read a few words from them to know that's not going to happen.

If the travel ban is loosened, and ordinary Americans can travel to Cuba on their own, just like the Cuban "exiles" used to, themselves, before _Bush, they're going to have their eyes opened for them permanently, just as it happened for you, and for Mika, and for a respectable handful of other D.U.'ers, as well.

Hope you'll be looking in at D.U. from time to time, and most surely when there are any big moments ahead in US/Cuba history! Hope there will be something to celebrate one day.

[Zorro]

13. Bye bye, comrade

There's more to life than spending your time arguing with people that won't ever agree with your point of view.

Vaya con Dios.

[roody]

14. I didn't know it was so bad. I have a few people on ignore.

My condolences for your loss.