Fetzer/Burton Moon Landing Debate Finale

[Charles Drago]

I don't know what's "tender" about my sensibilities in sensing that you were suggesting I was collaborating with the enemy! For a former Marine Corps officer, that's rather strong language.

Dear Jim,

This is precisely the response I attempted to engender when I deliberately used a confrontational tone in my previous post.

I made no such suggestion of "collaboration" in your case insofar as the verb "to collaborate" as I use it here is defined as "to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially an occupying force."

The key word: "willingly."

If you seriously contend that somehow I am accusing you of being a Quisling, then there's nothing I can do to change your mind. Please tell me that this is not the case.

I write again: Absent repeated, unambiguous reminders of the foul nature of your once-removed EF correspondents and their villainous games, your published engagements with them deliver the very prizes they most ardently seek.

Burton, his fellow tools, and their masters are delighting in this thread. Andy Nine-Iron's bow tie must be spinning! The "Colby" ghostwriters must be painting the streets of Colonia Dignidad brown -- you know, the color of their shirts!

I take on intellectual opponents on a wide range of issues -- JFK, 9/11, Wellstone, now the moon landing hoax -- but, even when I have not trusted my opponents, I have not supposed that I was betraying the faith.

You make my point so powerfully: You are not, in this case, facing off against "intellectual opponents." You are doing battle with enemy sappers!

BUT WHEN YOU REFER TO THEM AS ANTHING BUT ENEMY SAPPERS -- AND ESPECIALLY "INTELLECTUAL OPPONENTS" -- YOU BESTOW UPON THEIR PROFFERED ARGUMENTS THE DIGNITY OF YOUR OWN ACCOMPLISHMENTS, INTELLECT, AND REPUTATION.

YOU ARE ELEVATING THEIR LIES TO THE LEVEL OF RESPECTABLE ARGUMENT.

PLEASE STOP IT!

I really don't understand this -- to me, seeming change in -- attitude.

Don't do this, Jim. My attitude toward you -- my respect and affection for you and all you've accomplished for our shared causes -- remain undiminished. Friends and colleagues are allowed and even obliged to do what we're doing here: taking each other to task.

Please don't doubt for a nanosecond that a prime objective of the enemy is to create rifts in the allied forces aligned against them. The acrimony on this thread was instigated and further fueled to do just that.

I knew that I was being baited into debating this issue, but I wanted to sort it out at some point in time, and the opportunity presented itself.

If you knew you were being baited, then by the nature of this conflict you were obliged to acknowledge the game up front!!! Expose the bastards and ONLY THEN hand them their empty heads!!!

The only opportunities presented were the opportunities for the enemy to infiltrate these pages, suck you into yet another playing field-leveling exchange, and further establish the bona fides of their mouthpieces.

They have made the most of those opportunities.

I simply did not anticipate the degree of duplicity and deception that I would encounter there.

Nor did I when I registered at the EF and played on its killing field for at least two years. But even my thick Sicilian head was penetrated by the increasingly transparent skullduggery of Burton, "Colby," Nine-Iron, et al.

When I began to hold their reptilian feet to the fire, they lied, cheated, and effectively cast me out.

I am grateful.

Now you confirm your awareness of "duplicity and deception" at the EF, yet you continue to engage the bastards on their terms.

For those who appreciate what's going on, it exposes their techniques and makes them more obvious to a wider audience.

This sentence is inherently contradictory. For "those who appreciate" the nature of the enemy agents on the EF, your engagement approach is as unnecessary as it is counter-productive.

For members of the "wider audience" who do not enjoy such appreciation, your engagement approach does nothing but further entrench their ignorance by implicitly bestowing respectability upon the enemy agents.

Subtle just doesn't cut the mustard in 21st century America, I'm afraid. We have no choice but to call a spook a spook.

If we don't expose their lies and duplicity, they are going to continue to take others in.

There, you've proven my greater point regarding our friendship and shared goals

We stand, shoulder to shoulder, facing the enemy.

Any fair and balanced person, I submit, learned from this -- not just about the moon landing hoax, but the underhanded methods of an enemy we all despise.

NO!!!

You are obscuring the enemy's "lies and duplicity."

Given everything we know about our culture and the sophisticated propaganda machine of the enemy, there is absolutely no reason to conclude that, absent direct, repeated statements of the dark truth, contemporary readers will see through the enemy's means and methods.

Let's stay together, Jim. There's too much at stake to allow the bastards to divide and conquor.

In friendship,

Charles

[Malcolm Pryce]

David

If your credulity is stretched beyond breaking point by the claim that they wiped the original moon landing tapes, what about the even more extraordinary claim that they destroyed all the blueprints for the Lunar Module? Arguably the most historic vehicle ever built on earth (or so the story goes).

It's interesting to read this attempt by a well-known moon-hoax-debunking site to pretend there is nothing unusual about this:


'Most people are surprised to learn that the design documentation for the lunar module amounts to a boxcar's worth for each individual spacecraft. …

Grumman is an aerospace engineering firm, not a museum. It did not wish to house the hundred thousand cubic feet or so of design documentation at its expense. As an aircraft manufacturer, Grumman is already required by aviation regulations to store the documentation for each commercial aircraft it builds. If the government does not require the manufacturer to retain the documentation, there is little incentive to do so voluntarily.

Only cursory material was retained for historical reference, and a few detailed items were saved by private citizens who picked them off Grumman's trash heap. But it's no great surprise to anyone who works in aerospace that the detailed documentation was destroyed.'

http://www.clavius.org/bibcollier.html

It's difficult to find words to adequately describe how preposterous this is: all the blueprints for the Lunar Module ended up on the company trash heap. As if!

[James H. Fetzer]

Charles, while I am and remain a huge fan, your argument appears to be flawed. In particular, if we make a cost/benefit analysis of these "engagements", we need to take into account the benefits as well as the costs. I consider this from an intellectual point of view, while you are doing so from a political. This is not surprising, especially given that I am a (now retired) professional philosopher, who has taught logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning for 35 years. As an obvious point, it is difficult to defeat a position if you do not engage it. The benefits that seem to me to derive from engaging in debate include these:

(1) by engaging the enemy, I learn the arguments they have to present;

(2) by engaging the enemy, I have an opportunity to defeat their position;

(3) by engaging the enemy, I encounter their tactics and can expose them.

Strictly speaking, discounting or ignoring an opponent's arguments on the ground that they are unworthy or corrupt is an example of the ad hominem fallacy. The strength of an argument is independent of its source, except for appeals to authority, which can be fallacious (when the authority is not an expert with respect to the issues on which s/he is cited) or non-fallacious (when s/he is). Even though these may be "bad guys", with which I agree, their arguments are not, on that count alone, either unworthy or unsound. Absent proof to the contrary, after all, their position might even be right or else be widely supposed to be.

It is difficult to appreciate how an enemy can be defeated without engaging it -- and this is as true with regard to JFK and 9/11 as it is with regard to the moon landing hoax. In the case of the former, we have THE WARREN REPORT and THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT to debunk. With regard to the moon landing hoax, the situation is murkier. If a subject is more taboo than 9/11 -- which is gradually becoming more respectable -- then it has to be the moon landing hoax. Being given the opportunity to debate it, I have taken it and done my best -- within the parameters of the debate, which my opponent frequently violated -- to prove them wrong.

No one who has read through the thread would have serious doubt that (1) I learned more about the arguments they have to present, (2) I had the opportunity to defeat them, and (3) I encountered their tactics and exposed them -- not just once or twice, but repeatedly throughout the thread. It is my belief that my arguments -- which revolved around Jack's work, by and large, with assists from Duane -- were more convincing and that I succeeded in exposing their shady tactics. But none of that would have happened had I not engaged in this debate at all. I would suggest, therefore, that, in this case, at least, the benefits outweigh the costs, which I invite you to consider.

I don't know what's "tender" about my sensibilities in sensing that you were suggesting I was collaborating with the enemy! For a former Marine Corps officer, that's rather strong language.

Dear Jim,

This is precisely the response I attempted to engender when I deliberately used a confrontational tone in my previous post.

I made no such suggestion of "collaboration" in your case insofar as the verb "to collaborate" as I use it here is defined as "to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially an occupying force."

The key word: "willingly."

If you seriously contend that somehow I am accusing you of being a Quisling, then there's nothing I can do to change your mind. Please tell me that this is not the case.

I write again: Absent repeated, unambiguous reminders of the foul nature of your once-removed EF correspondents and their villainous games, your published engagements with them deliver the very prizes they most ardently seek.

Burton, his fellow tools, and their masters are delighting in this thread. Andy Nine-Iron's bow tie must be spinning! The "Colby" ghostwriters must be painting the streets of Colonia Dignidad brown -- you know, the color of their shirts!

I take on intellectual opponents on a wide range of issues -- JFK, 9/11, Wellstone, now the moon landing hoax -- but, even when I have not trusted my opponents, I have not supposed that I was betraying the faith.

You make my point so powerfully: You are not, in this case, facing off against "intellectual opponents." You are doing battle with enemy sappers!

BUT WHEN YOU REFER TO THEM AS ANTHING BUT ENEMY SAPPERS -- AND ESPECIALLY "INTELLECTUAL OPPONENTS" -- YOU BESTOW UPON THEIR PROFFERED ARGUMENTS THE DIGNITY OF YOUR OWN ACCOMPLISHMENTS, INTELLECT, AND REPUTATION.

YOU ARE ELEVATING THEIR LIES TO THE LEVEL OF RESPECTABLE ARGUMENT.

PLEASE STOP IT!

I really don't understand this -- to me, seeming change in -- attitude.

Don't do this, Jim. My attitude toward you -- my respect and affection for you and all you've accomplished for our shared causes -- remain undiminished. Friends and colleagues are allowed and even obliged to do what we're doing here: taking each other to task.

Please don't doubt for a nanosecond that a prime objective of the enemy is to create rifts in the allied forces aligned against them. The acrimony on this thread was instigated and further fueled to do just that.




If you knew you were being baited, then by the nature of this conflict you were obliged to acknowledge the game up front!!! Expose the bastards and ONLY THEN hand them their empty heads!!!

The only opportunities presented were the opportunities for the enemy to infiltrate these pages, suck you into yet another playing field-leveling exchange, and further establish the bona fides of their mouthpieces.

They have made the most of those opportunities.




Nor did I when I registered at the EF and played on its killing field for at least two years. But even my thick Sicilian head was penetrated by the increasingly transparent skullduggery of Burton, "Colby," Nine-Iron, et al.

When I began to hold their reptilian feet to the fire, they lied, cheated, and effectively cast me out.

I am grateful.

Now you confirm your awareness of "duplicity and deception" at the EF, yet you continue to engage the bastards on their terms.

For those who appreciate what's going on, it exposes their techniques and makes them more obvious to a wider audience.

This sentence is inherently contradictory. For "those who appreciate" the nature of the enemy agents on the EF, your engagement approach is as unnecessary as it is counter-productive.

For members of the "wider audience" who do not enjoy such appreciation, your engagement approach does nothing but further entrench their ignorance by implicitly bestowing respectability upon the enemy agents.

Subtle just doesn't cut the mustard in 21st century America, I'm afraid. We have no choice but to call a spook a spook.

If we don't expose their lies and duplicity, they are going to continue to take others in.

There, you've proven my greater point regarding our friendship and shared goals

We stand, shoulder to shoulder, facing the enemy.

Any fair and balanced person, I submit, learned from this -- not just about the moon landing hoax, but the underhanded methods of an enemy we all despise.

NO!!!

You are obscuring the enemy's "lies and duplicity."

Given everything we know about our culture and the sophisticated propaganda machine of the enemy, there is absolutely no reason to conclude that, absent direct, repeated statements of the dark truth, contemporary readers will see through the enemy's means and methods.

Let's stay together, Jim. There's too much at stake to allow the bastards to divide and conquor.

In friendship,

Charles

[Charles Drago]

Jim,

We're getting somewhere.

You have not been engaged in a "debate" with these people.

Would you "debate" a JFK LN?

I wouldn't.

Do you know why?

Because the JFK conspiracy debate is OVER, and anyone with reasonable access to the evidence who wishes to continue it is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

Anyone WITHOUT said reasonable access is not to be debated, but rather educated. And said education must include a detailed presentation of the "debate is over" reality.

Again, you are not "debating" Burton (in this case). Or at least you should not debate anyone who behaves like him.

FOR WHEN YOU OSTENSIBLY DEBATE A BURTON, YOU DIGNIFY THAT PERSON'S PROFFERED POINT OF VIEW -- AND THUS, BY DEFINITION, YOU DO THE ENEMY'S SACRED WORK.

Let's not argue semantics. Of course one must engage an enemy in order to vanquish it. But "engagement" in this case must include stated recognition of the enemy's nature and objectives.

You cannot engage a Burton and have any hope of victory if you do not define the opposition.

Argument alone, within the context of engagement of this sort of enemy, is doomed to failure insofar as, absent exposure of the enemy's game, even the most powerfully persuasive argument may win a skirmish but undoubtedly will prolong, and thus by definition help lose, the war.

Charles

[James H. Fetzer]

JFK and even 9/11 have been far more extensively aired than the moon landing. I was very precise in setting the boundaries of the debate (or "pseudo-debate", if you like), without taking for granted that my opponent would repeatedly violate his own stipulations -- which exposes his chicanery for anyone who reads the thread in a dramatic and convincing fashion. I would be glad to debate McAdams or Bugliosi, by the way, so if you can arrange it, be my guest! I put together a team to debate NIST about 9/11, but NIST declined to engage us. We have different approaches, Charles. I am not criticizing you or drawing comparisons between us, because I think there is room for your more contemplative approach as well as my more combative. I am doing what I can to expose the opposition with respect to its beliefs, its arguments, and its tactics, where it would be difficult to deny I have succeeded. I have one style and you another. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Jim,

We're getting somewhere.

You have not been engaged in a "debate" with these people.

Would you "debate" a JFK LN?

I wouldn't.

Do you know why?

Because the JFK conspiracy debate is OVER, and anyone with reasonable access to the evidence who wishes to continue it is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

Anyone WITHOUT said reasonable access is not to be debated, but rather educated. And said education must include a detailed presentation of the "debate is over" reality.

Again, you are not "debating" Burton (in this case). Or at least you should not debate anyone who behaves like him.

FOR WHEN YOU OSTENSIBLY DEBATE A BURTON, YOU DIGNIFY THAT PERSON'S PROFFERED POINT OF VIEW -- AND THUS, BY DEFINITION, YOU DO THE ENEMY'S SACRED WORK.

Let's not argue semantics. Of course one must engage an enemy in order to vanquish it. But "engagement" in this case must include stated recognition of the enemy's nature and objectives.

You cannot engage a Burton and have any hope of victory if you do not define the opposition.

Argument alone, within the context of engagement of this sort of enemy, is doomed to failure insofar as, absent exposure of the enemy's game, even the most powerfully persuasive argument may win a skirmish but undoubtedly will prolong, and thus by definition help lose, the war.

Charles

[David Guyatt]

David

If your credulity is stretched beyond breaking point by the claim that they wiped the original moon landing tapes, what about the even more extraordinary claim that they destroyed all the blueprints for the Lunar Module? Arguably the most historic vehicle ever built on earth (or so the story goes).

It's interesting to read this attempt by a well-known moon-hoax-debunking site to pretend there is nothing unusual about this:


'Most people are surprised to learn that the design documentation for the lunar module amounts to a boxcar's worth for each individual spacecraft. …

Grumman is an aerospace engineering firm, not a museum. It did not wish to house the hundred thousand cubic feet or so of design documentation at its expense. As an aircraft manufacturer, Grumman is already required by aviation regulations to store the documentation for each commercial aircraft it builds. If the government does not require the manufacturer to retain the documentation, there is little incentive to do so voluntarily.

Only cursory material was retained for historical reference, and a few detailed items were saved by private citizens who picked them off Grumman's trash heap. But it's no great surprise to anyone who works in aerospace that the detailed documentation was destroyed.'

http://www.clavius.org/bibcollier.html

It's difficult to find words to adequately describe how preposterous this is: all the blueprints for the Lunar Module ended up on the company trash heap. As if!

Thanks for that Malcolm. I wasn't aware of this. And yes, I agree with you, it is a completely preposterous claim on their part.

It becomes more and more evident that any evidence that can be used to highlight serious flaws in the NASA Moon project story is being/has been systematically placed out of reach.

[Jack White]

Forgive me but I don't see that Dave's post 557 invalidates the thrust of my post above?

If you are arguing, as Fetzer and White are/were, that the 34 second "moontruth" footage is direct evidence of the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing, then why, upon close examination, doesn't the suit in that footage visually match the suits used by Apollo 11 astronauts? Why, instead, does the suit used in the "moontruth" footage match the suit used in other footage, both of which have been claimed to have been made by Adam Stewart of The Viral Factory, 10 or so years ago?

And if you are arguing, with Fetzer and White, that the 34 second "moontruth" footage is evidence that the Apollo 11 moon landing could have been faked, then if, like Fetzer and White, you at one point maintained that the footage was genuine 1969 footage of the actual faking of the thought-to-be-real-but-actually-fake Apollo 11 moon landing - and with the footage being revealed as a spoof upon the most cursory investigation - don't you think the credibility you require to speak on the subject is by now shot to hell?

If you never agreed with Fetzer and White that the "moontruth" footage might be genuine footage of the faking of the thought-to-be-real-but-actually-fake Apollo 11 moon landing, but you still take their point that it none-the-less is evidence that the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing is at least technically possible, then I, Sir, would give you the floor, because among those on this thread who wish to champion the idea that the moon landings were faked, you have by far the most credibility.

Sir, I do not argue that the video is real, though Jim does. I argue that
the case for it being a SPOOF is ridiculous and improbable, as Jim does.
What is the motive for anyone to go to such great lengths to concoct
such an event? It would be very expensive and require lots of manpower
and photo facilities and days of time to construct a set and build a LM,
and obtain a spacesuit, etc. etc.

So a case for spoofery must overcome motive, lots of expenditure of
money and time, and much more FOR A VIDEO FOR WHICH THERE IS
NO MARKET and which appeared mysteriously.

Nothing is done by anyone unless they have a motive for doing it.
An EXPENSIVE JOKE with no target audience does not happen without
reason.

There is a distinction between arguing that something is real and
arguing that it is ridiculous and improbable.

Jack

[Malcolm Pryce]

David

According to the Wikipedia entry on Moon landing conspiracy theories the blueprints to the moon buggy are missing too.

This is a real shame. Even now, forty years later, we still don't have a fold-away electric car. It's almost as if technology has regressed since the space age

[James H. Fetzer]

Forgive me but I don't see that Dave's post 557 invalidates the thrust of my post above?

If you are arguing, as Fetzer and White are/were, that the 34 second "moontruth" footage is direct evidence of the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing, then why, upon close examination, doesn't the suit in that footage visually match the suits used by Apollo 11 astronauts? Why, instead, does the suit used in the "moontruth" footage match the suit used in other footage, both of which have been claimed to have been made by Adam Stewart of The Viral Factory, 10 or so years ago?

And if you are arguing, with Fetzer and White, that the 34 second "moontruth" footage is evidence that the Apollo 11 moon landing could have been faked, then if, like Fetzer and White, you at one point maintained that the footage was genuine 1969 footage of the actual faking of the thought-to-be-real-but-actually-fake Apollo 11 moon landing - and with the footage being revealed as a spoof upon the most cursory investigation - don't you think the credibility you require to speak on the subject is by now shot to hell?

If you never agreed with Fetzer and White that the "moontruth" footage might be genuine footage of the faking of the thought-to-be-real-but-actually-fake Apollo 11 moon landing, but you still take their point that it none-the-less is evidence that the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing is at least technically possible, then I, Sir, would give you the floor, because among those on this thread who wish to champion the idea that the moon landings were faked, you have by far the most credibility.

Sir, I do not argue that the video is real, though Jim does. I argue that
the case for it being a SPOOF is ridiculous and improbable, as Jim does.
What is the motive for anyone to go to such great lengths to concoct
such an event? It would be very expensive and require lots of manpower
and photo facilities and days of time to construct a set and build a LM,
and obtain a spacesuit, etc. etc.

So a case for spoofery must overcome motive, lots of expenditure of
money and time, and much more FOR A VIDEO FOR WHICH THERE IS
NO MARKET and which appeared mysteriously.

Nothing is done by anyone unless they have a motive for doing it.
An EXPENSIVE JOKE with no target audience does not happen without
reason.

There is a distinction between arguing that something is real and
arguing that it is ridiculous and improbable.

Jack

Strictly speaking, my position is that if it is real footage of the faking of the moon landing, then we have direct proof it was faked; and if it is not, then we have proof that faking it was entirely technically possible. While I happen to believe that it was almost certainly done on the same set using the same crew and the same director as the broadcast footage, even it I am wrong about that, we have proof that faking it was entirely possible. I also agree with Jack that there appears to have been no good reason to have taken the time, effort, and expense to fake the faking of the moon landing, when there was no financial incentive or public interest. Taken with the absence of the design and specs of the moon lander and of the moon rover, we appear to be confronting the destruction of evidence of the commission of a crime -- a massive fraud! -- that reflects what is known in the law as "consciousness of guilt" to make it harder to prove that the taxpayers of the nation were defrauded by an agency of the American government. For those of us who are studying the evidence, however, there is no serious doubt that that is precisely why they were destroyed.

[Charles Drago]

I also agree with Jack that there appears to have been no good reason to have taken the time, effort, and expense to fake the faking of the moon landing, when there was no financial incentive or public interest.

I am studying the evidence impartially, and I do not agree with this conclusion.

You unreasonably limit the presentation of possible motives.

Permit me to repost the following:

HYPOTHESIS: Detectable fakery of moon landing photography was created and disseminated to launch (pun intended) conspiracy theories designed to A) reinforce the "nothing can be known for certain" foundation upon which contemporary socio-political power and academic inquiry is partially but significantly based; B) further Balkanize an already fractured deep political research community; and C) assault American exceptionalism and thus taint all other inquiries into historical conspiracies in general and the JFK conspiracy in particular.

ALL-IMPORTANT STIPULATION: The hypothetical fakery and larger operation of which it is the key component would be effective whether or not actual Apollo moon landings happened.

SCENARIO I -- The Apollo landings took place as advertised. A number of legitimate photos are quickly doctored so as to indicate fakery and thus support the "uncertainty conspiracy" herein hypothesized.

SCENARIO II -- The Apollo landings never took place. Flawless AND detectable faked photographs were created to support the "uncertainty conspiracy" herein hypothesized.

PRECEDENTS: The Zapruder Film; the so-called (by me, at any rate) Doppelganger Gambit.

DISCLAIMIER: I'm not prepared to go to the wall with the hypothesis herein presented. Yet.