Well, since the moderators won’t respond by emails, might as well:
On October 12, 2003, the Lancet released report finding that Yasser Arafat’s belongings were contaminated with polonium. Since I still have institutional subscription access from my alma mater, after reading the paper, I opened this thread in MPSIMS where I, after posting the polonium values verbatim from the paper, I wanted to discuss who “exposed Yasser Arafat to polonium 210 and why?”. The thread was eventually moved to Great Debates. It eventually deterioriated into a discussion on tobacco plants and my supposed anti-Semitism. You can read my flameout post here.
In the beginning, the participants of the thread poked fun, said I was jumping to conclusions, and all of that. Which, by the way, is a funny thing, because just three weeks later, an additional study confirmed that Mr. Arafat bones registered with high levels of radioactivity. Shortly after that study, the Russians released an incomplete set of data without experimental controls that also showed higher-than-normal polonium values in Mr. Arafat’s bones, however, the Russian report but maintained (in the discussion) that these results were not indicative of polonium poisoning. The opposition, now abandoned by the Russians, were now clinging to hope from a press release from French scientist that claimed there was no evidence Mr. Arafat was poisoned, insisting that it should be considered for debate. Unfortunately, there was - and to my knowledge - still no record of an actual French report.
In any case, all were great fodder for the GD until the discussion shifted at around page 4 - 5. It no longer became about Mr. Arafat but about my supposed anti-Israel/anti-Semitic beliefs, how I believe Israel was responsible for Mr. Arafat’s death, and how I think"jew bankers" threatened the French and Russians. The shit hit the fan when I made this comment in full:
In which, in turn, another poster, Dissonance, quoted that as:
Please reread both versions. Notice how context was removed? The first and last sentence were stripped and my viewpoint packaged as an anti-Semitic soundbite. I responded - in full - agreeing with Dissonance that was was no evidence that Israel was behind Mr. Arafat’s assassination, here:
My agreement with Dissonance is not enough, he writes, infull:
It snowballs from there with most, if not all, of the peanut gallery jumping on this, making specious claims that I’m anti-Israel, anti-Semite, a liar,and that I believe Israel was responsible for Mr. Arafat’s death. None of which were true. To defend myself, I pointed out in this post, and this one, and in this onethat I was being misquoted and my position mischaracterized. My position was that if you’re going to truncate someone’s position, it should be followed by ellipses and/or <snips> to let other readers you’re taking a sentence out of context.
Tomndebb, who I assume was not moved by people calling me anti-Israel, insinuating I’m anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic, calling me a liar, or people not understanding the difference between a calibration standard and an experimental control; nae, m’lord, he was more upset was I was defending myself and misspelled "you’re"as “your”. He wrote, infull:
First, why so personal with your moderator hat on? Second, do you normally comment on people’s grammar with it on? Or is it just me? Lastly, and most importantly, it’s not clear everyone because he removed the context of that specific point which paints me as some anti-Semite. Tomndebb says my claim is false, yet the rules of quoting someone is clear as day here; CK Dexter Haven, writes, in part:
(bolding and underlining mine; I changed "
[QUOTE]
" to “[Q]” as it wasn’t parsing well on preview)
Interestingly, the same posts tomndebb struck as offensive, contained, in part, the what CK Dexter Haven is saying. Here, in this post, I wrote to Dissonance:
(bolding mine)
This post (and its antecedent) echoes the aforementioned post CK Dexter Haven wrote on this message board in 2006. Like I wrote to you personally, I believe you had a bias before you walked into that thread. I don’t know - nor care- what that bias is (or was) but that’s what I think. Otherwise, you would’ve known it was 10 v 1 and you would’ve pointed out why the way Dissonance was quoting me was acceptable to the SDMB. Think about it. If everyone quoted the way Dissonance did to me, there would be no fruitful discussion on this message board. Ever.
If you doubt this,** tomndebb**, write me a paragraph on anything and I’ll strip the first & last sentence, all of the qualifiers, I won’t add ellipses so people will think it’s your quote in full, and then add something about “jew bankers” and cast you as anti-Semitic. See, isn’t it fun?
I can deal with posters posting in a manner that’s not going to facilitate discussion but I can’t deal with moderators who sanction it as acceptable and tell me to back off from exposing it; when, in fact, it goes against the board rules. This is exactly why I have asked - if not begged - for my account to be closed via personal email and public posts. This is not a decision made in isolation but superimposed over the hate-filled threads you (not just you, but all of the moderators) accept/allow/facilitate/sanction against blacks, every single month (give a take a few weeks) for over a decade. Yet, somehow that escapes your radar and my misspelling of the contraction “you are” catches your eye instead? Yeah, right. I might be dumb but I’m not that dumb. Delete my account please.
- Honesty
