Quote:Here's hoping that the many honorable deep political researchers who continue to dignify the sordid EF by their collective presence there now see fit to withdraw. The likes of Michael Hogan, Greg Parker, and Bill Kelly, among others, are very welcome at DPF.
I would love to see these and other reseachers come over to DPF and help contribute to the cause.I thought it was great to get a new voice to participate(Martin Hay),but he is now most likely gone,cut down on his first post.So,I have to say,how is DPF going to recruite valuable reseachers,after they have seen what happened to Martin?Bill Kelly is already a member,but rarely posts,why?I think he too felt unwelcomed in some way.I think DPF needs to do better if it wants other valuable researchers here.
My read: 1) Charlie ripped him a new one and 2) no one else responded directly to the substance of his post (except for CD). If he were to have been taken seriously, with respect from a couple of others, then CD's bombast might have been mitigated. If I were MH, I would have felt humiliated, and rightfully so.
But let's face it. Many the posts that go up at EF just do not fit here. Discussing smudges, blurs, packaging, fingerprints and endless minutia doesn't happen here for a reason. The leaders have just moved on. It's all all old stuff. The assassination of JFK come much closer to being solved. There are bigger fish to fry. It takes a while to hang out here to get it. Sometimes I wonder if there were some required reading that would have to happen for a new member to go through before being allowed to post.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
LR Trotter Wrote:I still can't understand why some "researchers" strongly believe and want to convince others that the photo has been altered to replace LHO with BNL. As others have stated, if in fact "Doorway Man" is Billy Nolan Lovelady, that still does NOT place the person identified Lee Harvey Oswald in the so called "snipers nest".
Because Fetzer and Cinque are two clueless nutcases whose lack of judgment and egos causes their minds to disconnect from reality and common sense.
They are like two crackpots desperately trying to become famous for their 'discoveries'.
Cinque cites Morrow, McClellan, Nelson, Hunt, TMWKK, Ventura. Obsesses with disproven thesis, counters with insults--"any (demeaning epithet) with half a brain"--(your response here).
Martin Hay used the term suspect vis-a-vis the FBI. Charles called for clarification. Martin took offense, more offense, and, more. Offense.
Charles hasn't varied an iota in arraying his men on the chessboard in the time I've wandered up here in the park to watch the masters.
Martin may at any time shrug it off and simply respond to that term.
Peter Lemkin Wrote:I think Keith has an point and this Forum needs a bit more friendliness unless and until someone really proves themselves a troublemaker. A bit more tolerance would be in order, methinks. Not all who have strange/different or naive points of view are agents provocateurs, and shouldn't be treated as such.
I agree, particularly so in light of the experience which drove me from this forum last year.
Phil Dragoo Wrote:Cinque cites Morrow, McClellan, Nelson, Hunt, TMWKK, Ventura. Obsesses with disproven thesis, counters with insults--"any (demeaning epithet) with half a brain"--(your response here).
Martin Hay used the term suspect vis-a-vis the FBI. Charles called for clarification. Martin took offense, more offense, and, more. Offense.
Charles hasn't varied an iota in arraying his men on the chessboard in the time I've wandered up here in the park to watch the masters.
Martin may at any time shrug it off and simply respond to that term.
What's in a word?
Try, Ladies and Gentlemen, "mastermind."
Further this deponent sayeth not
Phil, it always amazes me how different people interpret different things differently. To wit:
Quote:I swear to Christ, it's as if the Sponsor/Facilitator/Mechanic model never was presented.
Have we learned NOTHING from our studies?
"The FBI" and "the CIA" conspired to kill neither JFK nor MLK.
You conflate the hammer with the carpenter.
You conflate the carpenter with the architect.
You conflate the architect with the homeowner.
The Sponsors are wetting themselves from laughter.
You read "calls for clarification," whereas I read derision. You say tomaato; I say tomahto. Still sounds like the launch of a cruise missile to me. Asking for clarification would start with, "I am a little confused on a couple of points. Would you mind ....?" Charlie and I got into it over this; he said what he said; I said what I said. We are getting along just fine. But "I swear to Christ," Charlie was not blowing kisses to MH.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
I'm not certainly not going to "rule" on anything here.
I am going to toss out a few more observations.
Plenty of members have been given a robust and challenging ride at DPF.
It's not a kindergarten, and it's not a polite debating society.
The personalities of members are pretty obvious to anyone who's been around for a while, and we all have different tolerance thresholds.
In my Mod hat, I considered getting involved in the recent exchange between Charles and Lauren. Within a short period of time, Charles and Lauren worked it out between them.
However, the stunts that Cinque and Fetzer, and Morrow and Fetzer, have recently pulled at DPF and other sites are of a different order all together.
I have called them Sunsteinian psyops, and I make no apology for this. This does not mean that they are necessarily Sponsored or Facilitated by an intelligence entity. However, it does mean that they achieve precisely the same purposes that a Sunsteinian operation would.
Namely:
- the disruption of serious research
- the banalization of serious research
- the relentless promulgation of hypotheses after they have been thoroughly debunked
- the publicizing of those hypotheses in arenas likely to get MSM attention
- the knowledge that these hypotheses and their chief protagonists (Cinque, Morrow) will not survive basic due diligence from MSM researchers
All serving the End Purpose of a Sunsteinian psyop: To delegitimize research which challenges officially sanctioned history, and to enable MSM to say "Look - this is why you can't trust conspiracy theorists".
DPF debunked Morrow and Fetzer's LBJ-did-it hypothesis.
DPF debunked Cinque and Fetzer's wacky-photo hypothesis.
When their disruption continued, DPF banned Morrow and Cinque.
In my considered judgement, this was and remains an absoutely correct decision.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:I'm not certainly not going to "rule" on anything here.
I am going to toss out a few more observations.
Plenty of members have been given a robust and challenging ride at DPF.
It's not a kindergarten, and it's not a polite debating society.
The personalities of members are pretty obvious to anyone who's been around for a while, and we all have different tolerance thresholds.
In my Mod hat, I considered getting involved in the recent exchange between Charles and Lauren. Within a short period of time, Charles and Lauren worked it out between them.
However, the stunts that Cinque and Fetzer, and Morrow and Fetzer, have recently pulled at DPF and other sites are of a different order all together.
I have called them Sunsteinian psyops, and I make no apology for this. This does not mean that they are necessarily Sponsored or Facilitated by an intelligence entity. However, it does mean that they achieve precisely the same purposes that a Sunsteinian operation would.
Namely:
- the disruption of serious research
- the banalization of serious research
- the relentless promulgation of hypotheses after they have been thoroughly debunked
- the publicizing of those hypotheses in arenas likely to get MSM attention
- the knowledge that these hypotheses and their chief protagonists (Cinque, Morrow) will not survive basic due diligence from MSM researchers
All serving the End Purpose of a Sunsteinian psyop: To delegitimize research which challenges officially sanctioned history, and to enable MSM to say "Look - this is why you can't trust conspiracy theorists".
DPF debunked Morrow and Fetzer's LBJ-did-it hypothesis.
DPF debunked Cinque and Fetzer's wacky-photo hypothesis.
When their disruption continued, DPF banned Morrow and Cinque.
In my considered judgement, this was and remains an absoutely correct decision.
As, you might guess, it also does in mine.
A certain deep political naif in a position of authority at the Deep Political Science ungraded room known as the EF has described the DPF actions herein referenced by Jan as "narrowing and restricting" acts. This person asks, presumably rhetorically, if DPF "is a better place for its narrowness, than [the EF] is, for its openness?"
In this person's defensive description of the simple-minded, naive EF policies that allow entities the likes of "Cinque" and "Morrow" and "Colby" free rein to act as agents provocateur and thus do great harm to our efforts on behalf of truth and justice as "openness" may be discerned the fatal flaw in his character and the EF's charter.
This young man who in his insufferably long and vacuous posts routinely conflates quantity with quality apparently does not understand that we are at war with the killers of JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X, plus other victims numbering in the millions. He apparently is of the belief that we are all engaged in polite academic discourse and debate.
He is a fool, of course. A fool of the worst sort: the sort who ends up killing his friends with kindness.
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:In my Mod hat, I considered getting involved in the recent exchange between Charles and Lauren. Within a short period of time, Charles and Lauren worked it out between them.
Thanks, Jan. Lauren and I not only "worked it out;" we have begun a cordial and productive private e-mail exchange.
My gratitude to you and to Lauren for fighting the good fight -- and for realizing that there IS a fight at hand.
Conspiracy Theories CASS R. SUNSTEIN University of Chicago - Law School
(Is it not precious: an apparatchik of the regime which counseled, "They bring a knife, you bring a gun"
or, in the alternative, you bring reasoned research, they bring the boy band In Cinque)
Abstract:
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have
worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible
event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks
of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who
subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and
the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge
is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge
is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a
result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational
influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy
theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even
characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold
conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it
is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist
groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to
rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
3. Cognitive infiltration
Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories,
arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn.
One promising tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean
1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for
use in future prosecutions. Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in weakening or even breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that
constitute these networks and groups.
How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups, including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior, their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts. Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.
In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success.68 In another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false identities. Each approach has distinct costs and benefits; the second is riskier but potentially brings higher returns. In the former case, where government officials participate openly as such, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities and conspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say, right from the beginning. The risk with tactics of anonymous participation, conversely, is that if the tactic becomes known, any true member of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be suspected of government connections. Despite these difficulties, the two forms of cognitive infiltration offer different risk-reward mixes and are both potentially useful instruments.
There is a similar tradeoff along another dimension: whether the infiltration should occur in the real world, through physical penetration of conspiracist groups by undercover agents, or instead should occur strictly in cyberspace. The latter is safer, but potentially less productive. The former will sometimes be indispensable, where the groups that purvey conspiracy theories (and perhaps themselves formulate conspiracies) formulate their views through real-space informational networks rather than virtual networks. Infiltration of any kind poses well-known risks: perhaps agents will be asked to perform criminal acts to prove their bona fides, or (less plausibly) will themselves become persuaded by the conspiratorial views they are supposed to be undermining; perhaps agents will be unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group. But the risks are
generally greater for real-world infiltration, where the agent is exposed to more serious harms.
All these risk-reward tradeoffs deserve careful consideration. Particular tactics may or may not be cost-justified under particular circumstances. Our main suggestion is just that, whatever the tactical details, there would seem to be ample reason for government efforts to introduce some cognitive diversity into the groups that generate conspiracy theories. Social cascades are sometimes quite fragile, precisely because they are based on small slivers of information. Once corrective information is introduced, large numbers of people can be shifted to different views. If government is able to have credibility, or to act through credible agents, it might well be successful in dislodging beliefs that are held only because no one contradicts them. Likewise, polarization tends to decrease when divergent views are voiced within the group.69 Introducing a measure of cognitive diversity can break up the epistemological networks and clusters that supply conspiracy theories.
Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks,
or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories
by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.
Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks
Jan, Thanks for just letting Charlie and I just have it. Once I spewed the venom within, I "realized" Charlie was a man of good heart. And thanks for tending the DPF garden of weeds. This is a very special place and deserves to be preserved.
BTW, those of you who have referenced Thy Will Be Done by Gerard Colby, thanks for that as well. I am up to p. 347, and I find it stunning.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
