Greetings... haven't posted in a while, been busy and still am. Just briefly:
D.O.N.: I don't think selassielive was out of line with his post on Eja's thread. It was a bit of a tangent, yes, but I could see how it related to some of the concepts expressed in Eja's post (which I want to respond to myself, when I have more time to compose a response that would do the post justice). Given some of the acrimonious exchanges between selassielive and Eja in the past, I was glad to see selassielive acknowledge the worth of Eja's post, and I don't think his response was intended to deliberately derail the reasoning. Normally face-to-face reasoning is much to be preferred to internet reasoning, but one advantage internet reasoning has, is that you CAN discuss various tangents and angles of a subject at the same time. What I think should be done, rather than insisting that people stick to the narrowest possible concept of "what the thread is about", is, if they are going to go off on a bit of a tangent, simply title the post "U.S. Government Corporate Identities" (for example). Then, the reader knows that s/he can either follow this tangent a bit (or start a new thread about it), or follow the main thread of posts that would be titled "re: Eja's Post" or whatever. I think this would be a good way of ensuring that readers don't have to trawl through masses of irrelevent verbiage in order to trace the main thread of the reasoning, whilst not restricting people from going off on tangents that are inspired by the original post, and that could lead to further illumination of the subject under discussion.
D.O.N., I wouldn't say you come across as an "AZZ", but I would say you occasionally sound almost hysterical in your eagerness to "root out" the [real or imagined] "fifth columnists" on Rastafari Speaks.
The real fifth columnists (whether they're conscious or unconscious of being such) will expose themselves by their words anyway. It's good to challenge people, as you have challenged me and I have challenged you. But there's no need to go out of your way to "set traps" for people to expose themselves, etc. (as I've seen you referring to it... eg., when I wrote to Sis Sofia in Portuguese, I didn't do it with the intention of "setting a trap" for her as you put it, but just in order to get across some concepts to her that I thought she might have trouble getting in English, assuming she really was a 15-year old Portuguese girl; and by the way, I agree with your ultimate assessment of the Sis Sofia issue.)
No matter that I consider selassielive to be my bredren (although I've never met him in the flesh), I could see your point in some of the issues you had with him. It seemed sometimes that he was posting more out of personal acrimony to some people, than in a sincere effort to engage with the ideas presented by said people. And (in MY opinion), that is what it seemed you were doing with selassielive's post on Eja's thread.
I wouldn't have reacted as strongly, but I can see why Ayinde was angry at seshata sefekht for distracting from his "Consciousness" post. On that post, Ayinde explicitly asked for responses written by the responders, not quotes and cut-and-pastes. Seshata ignored this request. In contrast, Eja's post raised a whole host of related issues, and ended with a fairly broad question. Selassielive's response addressed an issue arising from ONE aspect of that question, and acknowledged at the beginning that it was not trying to be a full response to Eja's post.
selassielive: I don't know the exact reasons why people are banned from the site, and why people have been banned in the past. But I think that you know as well as I do, that people don't get banned simply for disagreeing strongly with a poster who is perceived to be "in" with the admin and moderators. If that were the case, there would be a lot less posters on Rastafari Speaks.
One of the reasons that I took about a year off from posting on here once, was out of solidarity with you and others who I felt had been unfairly banned. There was one specific exchange between you and a white poster who is close to the moderators, that I remember pissing me off, because in my view, you asked this poster a very legitimate question that she ignored, after this poster had been saying some things that I thought out of line for a white person to say to Black Rastafari people (even if I may have agreed with some of her points). Soon after that, you and others were banned. I felt rather disgusted by this and took some time off the board.
I came back with a slight chip on my shoulder from observing these things, and wrote a couple of posts that challenged the admin and moderators of the site. I wasn't banned for that. In response to my concerns, I was told that I am not privy to all the private communications that take place on Rastafari Speaks/Africa Speaks, and hence do not know the real reasons why people may have been banned. Well, that is certainly true.... so, since I can't know exactly what went on, only different people's accounts and perspectives of it, the thing to do would be to give all parties concerned the benefit of the doubt, and just move on with the reasonings.
Some of the issues you've had with some people on this board, I initially had similar issues, but I felt that they were fairly and adequately addressed by responses to my questions. If you're wrong you're wrong and if you're right you're right, and it seemed to me that in that case, I was wrong and the other posters were right. So, I try to learn from that and move on.
One thing to note, is that no one ever gets *really* banned from Rastafari Speaks. (Like how no one ever really dies). People are free to return under a different username, and as long as they don't repeat the behavior for which they were banned, they won't be banned simply because they are recognized as, or suspected to be, the same person who was banned before.
So, don't blow the ting out of proportion... many admin and moderators may express quite similar opinions quite strongly and quite repeatedly, and vociferously critique opposing opinions, but that doesn't translate to "thought police." In "1984", the thought police could definitely lock you away for life or execute you.
P.S. Just because I used the word "fair" somewhere in this post, don't think that I have been absorbed into some kind of SELF group mind. But, if I see a set of people, and the more I see dem, the more I see how I agree with them, I'm not gonna stop agreeing with them because my friends or me myself have had some kind of personal issue with them. Truth is truth!
P.P.S. I think if you look back pon Ayinde's statement that he "is conscious of many absolute truthS" [plural], you might re-evaluate what (I believe) he was trying to say. I don't think he ever explicitly said that he, or anyone else, was absolutely conscious of the absolute totality of all absolute truth [singular]. If he was, he would have known that "IanI" was a white woman right from the start. I don't think that's what he was claiming.
Well look nuh, I've said all I'm gonna say on this, so y'all take it or leave it... be good and enjoy the summer, people.
"It's a beautiful day, and everybody's feelin wonderful, the ladies is out, lookin fly, dressed comfortable, I love to wake up, and smell the breeze through the window, slip on the fatigues, grab a dutch and roll some indo"- dpz
I'm out to enjoy what little sun we get in Wales, hope y'all do the same. P.E.A.C.E.