Technical Hurdles Suggest Extensive Z-Film Alteration Highly Unlikely

[Jan Klimkowski]

As you've noted elsewhere, Jan, we all have our personal boiling points. How many times can we reasonably be expected to the make the same sound, complex arguments and refute the same unsound, simple-minded arguments before we reach that point?

And Albert Rossi has contributed much in his short time here at DPF. I share his disgust at the manner in which the arguments in this thread have been made.

As you know, I've reached out to Albert publicly and privately to urge him to reconsider. He has responded privately, so I'm not at liberty to share his thoughts as expressed in those communications. And now I once again ask Albert to rejoin his comrades here at DPF who have enjoyed and learned much from his contributions to date.

Researchers need thick skins.

Hypotheses need testing against the known and potential evidence.

Agreed. Heartily agreed!

Researchers don't need abuse from the research community.

And that is what I see here.

Ahh, but the wolves come to us in the fine wool garments of researchers.

Here we just may have reached the core of the greater disagreement that weakens our friendship.

I submit that your expectations regarding DPF are unrealizable.

By the very nature of the subject matter it is dedicated to exploring and exposing, DPF does not and indeed cannot ever exist as a pure deep politics research e-institution.

Why? Because the forces we would help eradicate will not play by our rules or any others but their own. They do, however, see vulnerabilities in DPF rules and do not hesitate to exploit them. They take and make opportunities to disrupt, disinform, and degrade us individually and collectively. They pit us against each other. The sophistication and virulence of their methods increases in direct proportion to their perceptions of the level of threats posed by DPF to their masters.

By the way, none of us should be surprised by this reality -- by what we "see here".

Jesus asked, "But what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A man dressed in soft clothing?" (Luke 7:24)

I had no such expectations when I went out in the wilderness of mirrors.

To be clear: I do not suggest that we should abandon decorum in our exchanges.

But forget at your own grave peril that we remain at war with the killers of JFK, and that one way of describing what we're doing here is returning the fire that erupted in Dealey Plaza.

Such bellicosity to describe a struggle that is, for us and by choice, non-violent! Yet as Gandhi taught us, "Non-violence is a weapon of the strong."

A weapon. And weapons are used in wars.

Gandhi wrote, "Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. 'Hate the sin and not the sinner' ... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator."

I've published my own humble take on this as follows: Until the life of the terrorist is held to be as sacred as the life of the terrorized, the terror will continue.

(I mention in passing that this position of mine has been vehemently decried by some of the DPF founders who are most disturbed by the vitriolic nature of some of my posts.)

This is very difficult for me. Apparent contradictions abound. Even, it appears, for Gandhi; the man who wrote "Hate the sin and not the sinner," also told us that "I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor. But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence ..."

In a literary endeavor such as DPF, our non-violent weapon of choice is rhetorical in nature. Hence so much (but not, alas, all) of my own weaponized prose is deeply considered and carefully targeted -- and always has been.

I will not hesitate to use irony, metaphor, logos, pathos, ethos, hyperbole, understatement, and every other rhetorical device at my humble command to wage this war. I will not hesitate to incorporate praise, ridicule, comfort, threat, satire, etc. into my rhetorical assaults on perceived enemies.

Of course the risk here, common to all who would wage war of any description, is that of loss of control. And thus I have sinned. Repeatedly.

I warmly welcome your thoughts, Jan, and those of all other correspondents of good will. And, for that matter, those who bear us ill will.

Charles - I have deep and genuine respect for your philosophy.

But we all live, and we all sin, according to our own conscience. And I do not share your philosophy in its entirety.

For me, the real enemies are those who rape children. Those who bomb the innocent. Those who commit atrocities as part of the Strategy of Tension.

Can I forgive them? I'm not sure I have enough compassion and enough soul.

I suspect I cannot forgive Pinochet, Bush, Reinhard Gehlen, Allen Dulles......

I will save my tears and my soul for the men, women and children who were victims of their horrific crimes.

So perhaps, Charles, you are a better man than I.

You have a fine pen. An insightful pen. A vengeful and venomous pen.

You must continue to use it in the search for the truth.

And when that truth is challenged, expose the the quality of the challenge - with wisdom, with evidence, with intelligence.

Make the case, and make the case well, but beware the early resort to malign conclusions.

For every agent provocateur, there will be a person of good intent but poor reasoning.

For every Sunsteinian psyop, there will be a stubborn truthseeker groping blindly towards epiphany. Towards a revelation which may never come.

Charles - you know well that when the signal to noise ratio of a member has become intolerable, or the DPF founders judge there to be overwhelming evidence of malign intent, then we will act to ban a person.

You know that we are no respecters of reputation, and will act according to our collective and considered view.

Until that point, my own personal view is that we should fight the fight with evidence, with logic, with insight and with as much patience as we can muster. And avoid the charge that X is an enemy agent.

Even though we know that the infiltration of the agent provocateur is a standard MO of the enemy.