Here is another great blog post by Laura Knight-JadczykSmoking Mirrors: And Down Will Come Baby, Cradle and All.
Reading the above linked blog nearly made me cry. Why? Well, because I have heard the same frustration and despair expressed by other sincere activists for World Peace in the past couple of weeks. The despair of the front line is setting in. Yes, it looks like COINTELPRO is winning. The depression is spreading among those who have been keeping up the good fight for so long; we are succumbing to the disease. But is that really true?
Perhaps with understanding we can find a remedy, a Bridge Over Troubled Water.
When you're weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all. I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough and friends just can't be found, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
When you're down and out, when you're on the street, when evening falls so hard, I’ll comfort you. I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
Sail on silver girl, sail on by. Your time has come to shine, All your dreams are on their way. See how they shine, oh and when you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind. [© 1969 Paul Simon]
First of all, I think that Lobaczewski has produced about the most valuable document for our times (or any times) that I have ever encountered. Every activist needs to read this material and read it carefully. You can't go into battle without studying the opposition, knowing their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and so on. Lobaczewski and those other activists and resistance fighters have already been through this. They studied it and mapped it. And the fact is, if you don't study what you are up against, you will make stupid mistakes, you will think you are winning when you are losing, and conversely, you will think you are losing when the opponent is just bluffing.
This information is crucial. A good activist can NOT ignore it. He or she does so only at his or her own peril. Yeah, sure, it seems like a huge burden to have to deal with accusations and counter-accusations in the COINTELPRO world, but if we don't, we are toast. As Lobaczewski tells us:
"If physicians behaved like ethicists, i.e. left in the shadow of their personal experience of relatively un-esthetic disease phenomena because they were primarily interested in studying questions of physical and mental hygiene, there would be no such thing as modern medicine. Even the roots of this health-maintenance science would be hidden in similar shadows. In spite of the fact that the theory of hygiene has been linked to medicine since its ancient beginnings, physicians were correct in their emphasis upon studying disease above all. They risked their own health and suffered sacrifices in order to discover the causes and biological properties of illnesses and, afterwards, to understand the patho-dynamics of the courses of these illnesses. A comprehension of the nature of a disease, and the course it runs, after all, enables the proper curative means to be elaborated. "[Political Ponerology]
Just now, activists are the physicians of society. We can't do a thing if we don't know the nature of the disease and that is what Lobaczewski lays out for us in all its horrible detail. We don't want to give up in despair thinking we have incurable cancer when it is just the measles or something that must run its course and can lead to full recovery if proper nursing is applied.
The questions about COINTELPRO backed groups and individuals MUST be asked, but it must be asked in the proper context. The question is: Are such groups and individuals just "victims" of the social disease, or are they a vectors? Are they innocently manipulated by the special psychological knowledge of those with serious psychological pathologies, or are they carriers?
Either way, COINTELPRO is deliberate and planned at some level, whether the individual or group is privy to that planning or merely it's dupe. The REAL "enemies" are those individuals pulling his strings. The bottom line is, if the individual cannot be cured, if their egos are so big they cannot admit that they have been or are being manipulated, then those who seek "health" need to contain them like Typhoid Mary.
Modern COINTELPRO has been developed to an all new level of complexity and sophistication even if they still use many of the old tried and true methods of defamation and slander. After all, they have had access to some excellent talent to figure out how the human mind works and to know how to get to people and even to "trigger" them at a distance. I'm not talking about mysterious "mind control" experiments here, but simple psychological knowledge, though I won't discount the direct experimentation. After all, if you have some control over what kind of psychological "diet" is being fed to a society, you can pretty well set them up to do what you want right there in front of God and everybody. Education, religion, television, video games, control of the media for "ideological vectoring," etc. It's a pretty formidable array.
But again, most of it is "terror tactics." We need to study it and find the curative means and employ them.
For example, John Kaminski and Kurt Nimmo have come under COINTELPRO fire quite a bit lately. They are accused of being on the CIA payroll, of being "ex-Navy intell" and so on. How do you tell the difference? If they say they are not, that's what everybody expects them to say if they ARE. It's also what they would say if they aren't. People tend to forget that. It's like Bush pointing the finger at Iraq saying "You have WMD and because you say you don't, you are obviously lying." Then, of course, the truth came out that Iraq was telling the truth. But for a considerable period of time, lots of people bought into the "plausible lie" argument. You might want to reread all the COINTELPRO posts here, especially the one about the above mentioned "Plausible lies," and try to remember that when two people are each saying something completely opposite, it is NOT usually a case of the truth being somewhere in the middle: one of them may very well be lying and the other telling the truth and nothing but the truth. I wrote there:
The truth - when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person look bad - especially if he is honest and admits that he has faults. If someone is telling the simple truth, and the other side is lying through their teeth, the basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side telling the truth. Under most circumstances, this shift put together with the fact that the truth is going to also be twisted in such a way as to bring detriment to the innocent person, results in the advantage always resting in the hands of liars.
Also, when you read the post about Plausible lies, you will read something else: how to evaluate the two sides:
Proof is a familiar concept to those used to conventional logical thinking. However what passes for proof in cultural, social, and even legal terms often bears only a superficial resemblance to what would be considered proof by those who really use their minds to think.
For example: in formal mathematics, proof rules are established - postulates are set out and a structure is built based on the postulates and the theorem. Mathematical proof is pretty much inarguable: once a proof is accepted as true it is added to the pool of known truths.
In legal proof there is a set of rules and a theory which the prosecution presents, and attempts to prove the theory by clever argumentation rather than facts. Truth is not the objective. Getting other people to believe the theory IS the objective. However, the prosecution's theory is whatever the prosecutor believes that he can get away with based on what is known about the case, or what he can PREVENT from being known. What legal 'proof' does is serve as a structure for convincing a group of people of the guilt of a person, about whom they know nothing.
There is another significant difference: Mathematical proofs are judged by experts in the particular case who are free to study any and all information about the case. Legal 'proof' is judged by people who are guaranteed to be ignorant of the case, who are only allowed to study the information presented during the formal trial, and who are not even allowed to consult the texts for what the rules say.
Our culture is so permeated with this “legal argument” system that it extends into our daily experience: the one who is the slickest at using the structure for convincing a group of people of something, is the one who is believed. Very few people take the time to obtain hard facts by carefully studying any and all information about a situation.
How do I know John Kaminski and Kurt Nimmo are NOT disinformation artists or in the pay of the CIA or Navy intelligence? I have done due diligence. Not only do they use their real names, they also have a real history of their public life and deeds that is written in an open book for anyone who cares to read it. I also know from personal information that if the CIA has them on their payroll, they haven't ever sent any checks and both of them struggle to survive every day just like the rest of us. They need help and they aren't getting it.
Speaking of which: We (Ark and I and our research group) are portrayed as either beneficiaries of funds from George Soros, French Intell, CIA, or we are thieves who take people in, fleece them by scaring them to death, and then cast them aside like used kleenex. Here is one of the latest posted to a public BB:
Anonymous Coward User ID: 67366 1/28/2006 6:01 AMRe: Ok, enough about Nancy and the Zetas. What do you all know about Laura and the Cassiopaeans?
Is LKJ the same as Il_Bagattel on STA?
'ill bagman' is not laura
he is a retired used car salesman and health food drink peddler from newport beach CA, in his early sixties he means well but is a total C dupe, fanatical, obsessed
he sold his property in CA for over half a mil and followed the cult to france he read some C crapola about CA falling into the ocean, and he was genuinely afraid! laura reinforced the conviction and invited him intor her spider's web
he moved in to the castleopia dungeons but was within days, due to his rather cloying used car salesman personality, made unwelcome by the cult - some of the cultists said he was making unwelcome sexual advances and remarks to younger female C dupes he was banished to a local village nearby, where he still remains the village idiot
what happened to his money?
LOL, take a guess
but even though he was ostracised he still is so mind controlled that he suffers from stockholm syndrome and thus constantly writes (at STA mainly) about apoclayptic and other paranoid crapola but always referencing the larks and Cs and always in a good 'light'
he is a very sad man and he has no idea how his life has been ruined by these archons - no idea
that story can be repeated in many other cases, and i hesitate to guess quite how many, and quite how much money and property has been stolen by these 2 hucksterfrauds, not to mention minds and lives and shattered relationships and marriages
i wonder if the larks understand the concept of karma?
roll on interpol please DO YOUR JOB
webmaster@maar.us
How to deal with nonsense like that? And believe me, this is a mild example. You ain't been COINTELPROd professionally until there are websites set up for the express purpose of destroying your reputation and thusly your ability to do anything positive for others in this battle against Fascism we face today! I reckon we are about the most attacked people on the net, and we were being attacked when it wasn't fashionable. Maybe we're onto something?
Now, you want the truth? Can't you handle the earth-shaking revelation?
First of all, the individual referred to above is not a "used car salesman" or "health food drink peddler" except in the mind of the writer who denigrates him, and seeks to dirty everything he touches, especially us. The man's father was a Car dealer in the American Midwest. The individual in question owned several nightclubs in large cities there; he also was a musician and played drums in a couple of well-known 60s and 70s rock bands. Later, he joined a large vitamin manufacturer as marketing director. Normal life story. But somehow his life was cheapened and vulgarized in a few, short, sentences constructed by a psychopath.
This individual has been a long time reader of our website, a discussion group member, an activist, (he led a movement to stop the building of an airport in CA that would have destroyed an ecologically sensitive environment), and supporter. When he reached retirement age, he saw what was coming in the US - POLITICALLY and economically - and decided he wanted to retire to Europe. Yes, he was scared - nobody in their right mind wouldn't be - , and yes, he thought earthquakes in California were likely at some point in the future (as do many experts), but that isn't what was driving him: his main fear was Bush and the Neocons. Rightly so.
So, he wanted to get out. Since we were the only people he knew in Europe, and since we could sponsor him to come here, it was only natural that we do so. Yes, he sold his house before moving; that's natural. Yes, he stayed with us for 6 months while looking for his "ideal house," and then moved in there. I have no idea how much money he has or how much he made on the sale of his house. He helped out with groceries while he was here, made a loan to us when we needed additional funds to try to get a mortgage to buy a house (that fell through - loans get repaid) but that was it. We helped him, he helped us and that is pretty simple and ordinary stuff in anyone's life. But see what has been made of it? See the filthy allusions and insinuations? See how it has been twisted to contribute "proof" to the claim that we are just con-artists and run a doomsday cult?
Well, obviously, anyone who reads the work on our website knows better. That is why we take note of the sites that do and do not link to us. That is why it was so interesting to observe the reactions to the Pentagon Strike video which I have written about earlier. After the Washington Post made the mistake of publishing a link to our website, all of the damage control machine went to work and the ONE thing they wanted to avoid at ALL costs was publishing a link to our website.
We must scare them to death.
And I should note that the writer of the above nastiness is very likely Vincent Bridges, best buddy and co-author with Jay Weidner, who is best buddy of Jeff Rense. You know, you can follow these links around and with a little digging, figure out who is who... (hint)
Meanwhile, of course, Jeff Rense got listed on a government website as a major source of disinformation. As Robin Ramsay, Editor of Lobster, writes in February's issue of Fortean Times:Full Blog entry
Among Arctic's Most-Feared Phenomena, Mountainous Ocean Ice Surges Crash Ashore in Alaska
ANCHORAGE, Alaska Jan 27, 2006 — Ridges of Arctic Ocean sea ice were shoved onto a Barrow road in quantities not seen in nearly three decades.
Two ice surges, known to Alaska Natives as ivus, stunned residents who had never seen large blocks of ice rammed ashore.
"It just looked like a big old mountain of ice," said L.A. Leavitt, 19, who left his nightshift job at the city early Tuesday to check out the ridges.
Ivus are like frozen tsunamis and crash ashore violently. They have killed hunters and are among the Arctic's most feared natural phenomena.
Residents said the northernmost ivu, about 20 feet high and 100 feet long, contained car-size blocks and left coastal Stevenson Road with only one lane.
The ice stopped about 30 feet short of a borough pump station that provides access to Barrow's underground water and sewer system, said North Slope Borough disaster coordinator Rob Elkins.
Strong winds from Russia and eastward currents began pushing pack ice toward Barrow on Saturday, Elkins said.
By late Monday night, thick, old sea ice, called multiyear ice, had shoved younger, thinner ice onto shore.
Elkins, who got a 5 a.m. Tuesday wake-up call from police, said a second ivu on the south side of town came to rest near a smaller coastal road and an empty playground. That ridge stretched about 200 feet.
"It was just an amazing sight," said Elkins, a five-year Barrow resident. "It looks like huge stacks of huge ice cubes."
The ivus, about two miles apart, had stopped moving when Elkins arrived. Bulldozers cleared the ice.
Winds from the west slowed Tuesday afternoon. Whalers also noted that a protective pressure ridge had formed more than a mile offshore.
Whaling captain Charlie Hopson, who coordinates oil spill responses in the area, said he could see blocks of ice churning slowly in the frozen ocean.
Whalers were happy to see the approach of multiyear ice. A solid platform of nearshore ice means safer travel and butchering.
"We always want this thing to happen before the whaling season to help get the ice solid and safe to travel on and then we can pick our way out to the lead," Hopson said.
Continued
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Page A14
Researchers said yesterday that they have identified a single genetic mutation that accounts for more than 20 percent of all cases of Parkinson's disease in Arabs, North Africans and Jews, a big surprise for a major disease in which genetics was thought to play a relatively minor role.
Although the mutation is rare in people with ethnic roots outside the Middle East, its discovery raises the prospect that undiscovered mutations may be major causes of Parkinson's in other groups.
"Genetics are going to be a lot more important in Parkinson's than people have appreciated," said study leader Susan Bressman, a neurologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.
The finding -- described in a pair of reports in today's New England Journal of Medicine -- could help reveal at last the mysterious underpinnings of Parkinson's, which causes tremors, rigidity and mental decline and is growing more common as the population ages.
Full story
10:10 am | Wind gusts to 200 mph in mountains
STEVE LYTTLE
slyttle@charlotteobserver.com
Workers at Grandfather Mountain described "an unreal" scene early Wednesday when record wind gusts of at least 200 mph battered the North Carolina tourist attraction in the northwest mountains.
"Our workers who were inside the Visitor Center said it was like a tornado -- a whirlwind -- inside the building after the windows broke," said Crae Morton, president of Grandfather Mountain and grandson of Hugh Morton, who developed the tourist site.
Morton said staff members don't know exactly how strong the northwest winds really blew late Tuesday night and early Wednesday.
The National Weather Service-approved anenometer measures only up to 200 mph. Morton said gusts reached that level several times. He said the staff assumes winds exceeded that mark.
It broke the Grandfather Mountain wind record of 195.5 mph, set April 18, 1997. Those winds are believed to be the strongest ever measured in the Carolinas.
The winds were created by a strong storm system over the Northeast. That system pumped chilly air into the Carolinas and the rest of the eastern United States, allowing temperatures to fall into the lower and middle 20's this morning. The low at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport today was 23 degrees, second-coldest this month behind a 22-degree reading Jan. 7.
The coldest readings reported in the Piedmont this morning were 21 degrees at Concord, Albemarle and Lexington.
Morton said the most amazing effect of the winds late Tuesday and early Wednesday was the lifting of a 300-pound boulder in the parking lot of the Visitor Center, at the 5,280-foot level of the mountain -- about 700 feet below the summit. Gusts forced the boulder, which was cemented to the parking lot, to roll over.
"One of our staff members has a picture of that," Morton said.
The winds also blew out several windows in the Visitor Center and caused other damage.
Winds were considerably calmer at the base of the mountain, where the tourists attraction's offices are located. Morton said the top of the mountain was closed to tourists Wednesday.
"It's calmer today," he said. "Earlier this morning, we had some gusts down here of about 50 mph. That means up at the Visitor Center, it was probably gusting around 100 mph."
Morton said that in high wind events, tourists are able to visit the animal habitats and museum at the base of the mountain, but the higher levels are closed.
"Winds that strong could rip the door off your vehicle," he said.
Grandfather Mountain records winds of well over 100 mph several times during the year. Morton said winter is a good time to visit the attraction.
"There are a few days each year when you can see downtown Charlotte from the top," he said. "It takes very clear conditions, and those usually happen in the winter."
Grandfather Mountain is about 100 miles from Charlotte.
The strongest wind in U.S. history was a 231 mph gust measured in 1934 at Mount Washington, N.H.
Grandfather Mountain wasn't alone in feeling the impact of strong winds.
The gusts knocked down trees and power lines across the foothills and mountains. At one time Wednesday morning, more than 10,000 customers were without electricity across the region. All of those outages were repaired by late Wednesday.
This morning's cold weather will be temporary, lasting only a day or two. Despite sunny skies, temperatures today will struggle to reach 50 degrees, which is still 1 degree above normal for this time of year. Then warming will begin.
Highs will climb into the upper 50's Friday and will be near 60 degrees over the weekend.
Forecasters say they see no end in sight to the pattern of the past month -- sporadic, brief cold spells, followed by several days of temperatures well above normal.
Here is another update on Abovetopsecret forum...very interestingI know I said "nuff said" about abovetopsecret.com, but so many people have been writing to me to ask for more information that I will try to answer some of the questions by way of publishing a post I received recently. I have changed the text slightly to remove any identifiers of the individual who wrote it.
Hi Laura,
I have gathered a bunch of information for analysis and have archived it. For now, I'll just give a general report of my observations about AboveTopSecret.com
First of all, from what I can see these ATS guys think a lot of themselves. They are trying to twist the Flying Fish article into a legal and ethical issue, claiming that the main purpose of the article is for commercial use to promote the 911 book on SOTT and that this is not ETHICAL. Additionally, they accuse SOTT of using the article, using blogs or whatever, to "google bomb."
So, let's get into it. First of all, a careful review of the site indicates that the entire abovetopsecret.com operation is a marketing campaign. The question is: what are they really marketing? I'll come to that.
The fact is, abovetopsecret.com is one of the most revolting sites I have ever seen for advertising and commercialism and annoyances. It seems they have one set of rules for themselves, and an entirely different set of rules for everyone else. Better yet, they think that THEY get to make up the rules! They can be as commercial as they want; they can build articles and compilations out of the authentic work of other people, and then they claim ownership rights! In many cases, when they do this, their use of other people's material really adds no new or original content. The cherry on this cake is that they then demand that no one can use the material they have aggregated by the labor of others if the site is commercial like them, or uses advertising like them; you get the picture.
As I said, their big push in the last couple of weeks is to brainwash their members and Netizens that this is all about ETHICS. It would be hilarious if I just heard the story as a joke, but it is for real and seeing the behavior and what passes for logical thinking over there is like studying a disease.
And FYI, there is no AboveTopSecret.com, LLP. It is bogus, Simon Gray says so in a post on ATS. All money goes to Simon or SkepticOverlord.
Simon Gray posted on 19-6-2004 at 08:59 PM
I am the owner of this site. It is not part of a company, limited, incorporated or otherwise. I am a sole practitioner with colleagues throughout the world who help operate AboveTopSecret.com. All monetary payments which maintain the continued service of our server are made to myself or SkepticOverlord. This is through funding created by advertising campaigns. You could carry out a business search but it would prove pointless. Myself and SkepticOverlord own the numerous domain names among the ATS universe. It is not a necessity to become a limited company to operate such a community as ours....
So much for “ethics” and legality. Wonder if the tax authorities where these guys live know that they think they can run an operation this size without having a legally incorporated or registered business? That's one ethics issue. Another is that THEY can use everybody else’s work to make money but demand that nothing from their site can be used on any site that has any commercial or even non-profit commercial interests! Sounds about ethical to me. Not! More interesting than that, however, is the fact that their license insists that anyone quoting anything from their site must credit a misleading, fictitious company name and second, that crediting must be done to non-legal entities such as internet monikers!!
Another observation: In the past couple of weeks, the 3 Amigos have been in high gear, dumping threads, changing threads, getting pissed at their members for not joining the "Pentagon - Fine Focus" thread and generally employing all kinds of obvious psychological manipulation tactics. They are propagandizing hard and heavy to their members about Ethics, even doing podcasts on Ethics! Go figure!
Now, a few items about this so-called “ethical issue” - what they consider “copyright infringement.”
A couple years ago the licensing displayed on the sit was Copyright. Then they joined up with Creative Commons: Attribution, No Commercial, No Derivative.
What they have changed since the publication of the Flying Fish article is that now you don't have to point to the exact Post ID in the URI link, you only have to point to the first page of the thread. They still demand that you give thread name, member name, say ATS are owners, blah, blah..
The way abovetopsecret.com is attempting to use Creative Commons seems to be a clear abuse of the intent or spirit of the licensing. It looks to me as if it is all part of one single devious plan: to swamp Google and other search engines with as many ATS pages and as many ATS links as possible.
For example, what they demand of anyone who quotes anything from their site to do is that for every single post you have to mention Above Top Secret twice, you have to give the named title of the thread, the name of the person posting and then the URL. This means that if I wanted to quote just one page of a discussion with say 15 posters on it, I would have to say Above Top Secret 30 times, and provide 30 linkable URL's . That is 15 links and 30 mentions of their name for the search engines to hit. It is free advertising. It is designed to force anyone who wants to quote threads or discussions to do advertising for AboveTopSecret.
There are some interesting corollary questions. One of these is: how the Commercial for-profit, mega-billion dollar search engine Google can be allowed to display their information in search results without displaying any CC information or licensing? One might think that abovetopsecret.com’s – and every other website, for that matter - content certainly helps Google earn money. Are search engines implicitly exempt? In any event, studying this Creative Commons issue has raised this question: search engines get the use of everyone's material scot-free.
Getting back to ATS: My overview indicates that everything abovetopsecret.com - including their "ethical" use of Creative Commons - does is designed explicitly to spam the search engines. They rant on and on about fair use, but – and this is the thing that smells bad about this Creative Commons thing - if copyright laws work, and copyright contains fair use clauses already, then Creative Commons is just making things a mess. As Creative Commons is worded, the owner can list their 'requirements' for attribution. Who determines what is fair and reasonable in what an owner is allowed to require? Bottom line is, none of it is legal. It is simply a tool for intimidation.
Another very disturbing thing about abovetopsecret.com’s Creative Commons “requirements” is the Non-Commercial clause.
ATS says: "Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. This includes display on any website that contains advertising, accepts member donations, or any other form of monetary compensation."
That is almost like saying that only THEY have the right to sell anything and collect any money! A site that has adsense for charitable donations is also excluded, though I am sure they wouldn't try to intimidate such a site if that site posted something that they agreed with. Bottom line is, they assert that no one – except them - can do anything commercial at all. You can’t advertise your grandmother's potholders; you cannot accept member donations; if a charity has member donations link, NIX.
But that is not even the best part. The best part is the last part "or any other form of monetary compensation". What in the heck is that? How broad and how vague is that? Contributing your time to a charitable organization can in some cases be considered as a charitable tax deduction under certain guidelines and in those cases it is considered a form of monetary compensation (because you get a tax benefit). This is a form of monetary compensation. They could use that last phrase to attempt to intimidate just about anyone they wanted, most especially if that other individual or site published something they didn’t agree with.
So on the one side, abovetopsecret.com uses their CC “requirements” to require the spreading of their name and links throughout the Internet and on the other side, they leave the Non-commercial clause so ambiguous that they could try to use it to intimidate anyone, anytime, for any reason they wanted. And obviously, they are arrogant enough to think they can get away with this stuff.
My impression is that the abovetopsecret.com gang is downright psychotic. I am flabbergasted at what they say officially on the site and what they are actually doing with the site that can be uncovered by anyone with a modicum of technical skills and a little time. They talk out both sides of their mouths at once and it is plainly visible to anyone with, as Laura says, two neurons firing. But they also have a group of Renfield types (see Dracula) who strut around like “Cool Cats”, swallowing whole almost everything the owners and admins feed them.
Now, as I said, abovetopsecret.com has been its own “google bomb” from its inception. What is even more curious, based on a bit of data collecting and analysis is that google seems to actually HELP them. Things that ATS does, if other sites did them, they would be penalized by the search engines if not entirely erased. That is an interesting observation all by itself and will require more data collection over a period of time.
But for the moment, let me try to explain what I mean: It seems that the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rules don't apply to AboveTopSecret. Not only do they have adverts posted to Google groups but also all over the Internet in bookmark resources, business directories, you name it. Their very own Forum Tagging system should act against them, but instead, for abovetopsecret.com, it only seems to help put more searchable hits into google! They have changed servers 4 times in three years which is a big negative according to search engine criteria. They have content cached under IPS and domain names. There are plausible explanations for many of these things (website owners change servers, websites have mirrors, etc.), but the enormity of it all put together with the obvious favors that google bestows upon them is significant.
Every action the owners take for what Simon calls "User Experience" is actually designed for one reason and one reason only, and that is to fill Google and search engines with pages and pages and pages.
By utilizing the psychological dependency that they have induced in their members, (it's almost cult like!) they get free labor to accomplish any marketing strategies that they come up with. They go on and on about poor ATS and how well-meaning and benevolent they are and have been and want to be, so now everyone must come out and show the world all the great work they do by putting the greatest threads in this new thread. Then, like robots, everyone comes obeys. In fact, that is what their whole COINTELPRO thread is about: it is designed to shove SOTT out of the search results, lure people to their site, and then present them with this great advertising page where they can slurp up more money.
What is sick is observing that the owners clearly know what they are doing. They know how they can manipulate the members to do whatever they want to accomplish as a business and marketing strategy. They know what they are doing in a fully conscious and evil way, from how they create and manage threads, to how they manipulate and use the forum members as tools to create more pages which are indexed in google, which in turn, by “thread targeting”, they seek to attract more users to control, who they manipulate to create more indexed pages, to get more people, to make more money, and around it goes.
Their thread management as stated by Simon Gray, is designed for the same purpose as everything else - pages. Pages and pages and more pages.
It's also obvious that they don't really care what is in the pages. Content is not the issue as it is to SOTT. The ATS directive is - PAGES. If a thread is not going anywhere - kill it. Get people to look at something else. If a thread is steaming along and gets too long, find a way to split it up into additional threads (many people get pissed off) so as to make more PAGES; add features to the site touting them as 'User Experience", when it is really just for pages for the search engines and that is all it is. It is obviously a full time job. No wonder the Amigos hide behind Monikers. If anybody found out where they really live and checked on them in their own towns, it might be very interesting.
Not all the members appear to be fooled, but most of them are so into it psychologically that they could never see it if it was put right before them. As I mentioned, it is more like a cult than an internet discussion. Only thing is, the members don't even realize that. There is no "teaching" nothing to really "believe in," but most definitely, Simon Gray is being subtly promoted as some kind of cultic object of adulation.
For example: To build prestige in self and allegiance to Simon, for abovetopsecret.com, the point system has been created. The Point System is used for reward and Punishment. They have contests to earn points and reinforce their self worth within the forum community. If Simon or the other owners approve, they get points. If they don't approve, they lose points. Can you imagine it? An internet discussion where people are lining up like little children in nursery school to get gold star stickers?
Recently, in early January, ATS turned on a new feature they call member tags. Member tags immediately added 37,000 pages to Google.
Coincidentally, this was right after the publication of Joe Quinn's article on SOTT, Dec. 31st.
What we notice about these 37,000 pages is that they are worthless as far as I can tell. No content. All the tag pages are basically just another form of indexing and advertising thread names. So they added 37,000 pages to Google with thousands of words, all pointing just to a set of intermediate pages listing thread names in categorizations (whether meaningful or not).
It looks as if they may have hundreds of thousands of pages in Google that all they are different presentations of index pages whose endpoint are all the same threads and posts. They self-reference voluminously. They may have ten pages or more all pointing to the same thread link, each one just sorted a different way. And the members think it is all real cool, but they haven't got a clue (most of them anyway). The owners currently are rewarding points for creating new member tags all the time.
They have a another new feature recently that lists last threads posted in by user. Click on a member name now and you get another type of index page all pointing to the same end points again! These things do not have to be indexed by Google and other search engines - it's basically search engine spam. The webmaster could be ETHICAL and use robots.txt to prevent all the garbage from getting into Google, but it appears to be all a part of the ATS marketing strategy. And Google does not seem to penalize them one bit for having 10 or 20 or 30 or more self-referencing pages all with the same internal endpoints! Figure that one out!
Just one user on their forum that does a moderate amount of posting can generate dozens of pages in Google just by their presence because of all the auto-generating self-referencing indexes created by their system. Some may even call this clever. I am sure many of their members would think so. It just builds pride in those members who are being manipulated (reminds me of the Nazis and their “pride building” programs) and if the owners arrogance could possibly go any higher, I am sure they would be proud of all their cleverness that they think no one can see, especially their utilization of the free labor. Bottom line is, it is not ETHICAL. No part of it.
Abovetopsecret.com is quite simply using its members as a free labor force to do work for them: Get more pages in Google which will draw more people to the site which will increase the labor force which will create more pages to get more people, to make more money.
Despite its claims about ETHICS, the bottom line is that Abovetopsecret.com is its own Google Bomb. ATS is an example of everything self-serving in our current reality - it is a microcosm of the Free market system, of corrupt government, democracy, business, almost everything that is wrong with this reality; all this is expressed in how abovetopsecret.com operates.
If the site is not directly handled by COINTELPRO, if the Abovetopsecret.com "Amigos" are not conscious COINTELPRO agents, then they are by default; it serves the same purpose because the infection of pathological elements reigns supreme there.
The 3 Amigos (Owners) manipulate everything about this site. They have figured out a way to manipulate google (that is why they put a thread link called "CoIntelPro" in the banner of every thread page, to push any search results for cointelpro and abovetopsecret deep into the google search pages behind them).
They do much behind closed doors but they show their arrogance freely throughout the site. They push their rules right and left, but they, as owners and moderators break them freely and regularly, seemingly as they please.
In short, it is all one giant marketing manipulation and the owners do not give a flip about the members or what is actually produced as a public consumable, so as long as it serves what is obviously their targeted purpose : To suck in more members to post which creates more indexed pages, to attract more readers, to vector their thinking and make money, and around and around it goes. It is rather amazing how the entire thing is designed and how most posters there haven't got a clue.
24 January 2006
By Laura Knight Jadczyk
I found a strange article yesterday: Return of the Puppet Masters that sent chills down my spine when I considered the implications:
by Carl Zimmer
Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people? The question emerged a few years ago, and it shows no signs of going away.
I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It's in the fluke's interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle. Another fluke, Euhaplorchis californiensis, causes infected fish to shimmy and jump, greatly increasing the chance that wading birds will grab them.
Those parasites were weird enough, but then I got to know Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled parasite lives in the guts of cats, sheddding eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host's body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy. That makes good sense for the parasite, since a cat would not be particularly interested in eating a dead rat. But scientists at Oxford discovered that the parasite changes the rats in one subtle but vital way.
The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat's nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety. (When researchers test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to make them panic.) The anxiety attack made the healthy rats shy away from the odor and in general makes them leery of investigating new things. Better to lie low and stay alive.
Then the researchers put Toxoplasma-carrying rats in the enclosure. Rats carrying the parasite are for the most part indistinguishable from healthy ones. They can compete for mates just as well and have no trouble feeding themselves. The only difference, the researchers found, is that they are more likely to get themselves killed. The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn't make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.
The scientists speculated that Toxoplasma was secreted some substance that was altering the patterns of brain activity in the rats. This manipulation likely evolved through natural selection, since parasites that were more likely to end up in cats would leave more offpsring.
The Oxford scientists knew that humans can be hosts to Toxoplasma, too. People can become infected by its eggs by handling soil or kitty litter. For most people, the infection causes no harm. Only if a person's immune system is weak does Toxoplasma grow uncontrollably. That's why pregnant women are advised not to handle kitty litter, and why toxoplasmosis is a serious risk for people with AIDS. Otherwise, the parasite lives quietly in people's bodies (and brains). It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma.
Given that human and rat brains have a lot of similarities (they share the same basic anatomy and use the same neurotransmitters), a question naturally arose: if Toxoplasma can alter the behavior of a rat, could it alter a human? Obviously, this manipulation would not do the parasite any good as an adaptation, since it's pretty rare for a human to be devoured by a cat. But it could still have an effect.
Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.
It's controversial work, disputed by many. But it attracted the attention of E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Torrey and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Infection with the parasite has been associated with damage to a certain class of neurons (astrocytes). So has schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia. Torrey lays out more links in this 2003 paper. While none is a smoking gun, they are certainly food for thought. It's conceivable that exposure to Toxoplasma causes subtle changes in most people's personality, but in a small minority, it has more devastating effects.
A year later, Torrey and his colleagues discovered one more fascinating link. They raised human cells in Petri dishes and infected them with Toxoplasma. Then they dosed the cells with a variety of drugs used to treat schizophrenia. Several of the drugs--most notably haloperidol--blocked the growth of the parasite.
So Fuller and the Oxford scientists joined forces to find an answer to the next logical question: can drugs used to treat schizophrenia help a parasite-crazed rat? They now report their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (press release). They ran the original tests on 49 more rats. Once again, parasitized rats lost their healthy fear of cats. Then the researchers treated the rats with haloperidol and several other anti-psychotic drugs. They found that the drugs made the rats more scared. They also found that the antipsychotics were as effective as pyrimethamine, a drug that is specifically used to eliminate Toxoplasma.
There's plenty left to do to turn these results into a full-blown explanation of parasites and personalities. For example, what is Toxoplasma releasing into brains to manipulate its hosts? And how does that substance give rise to schizophrenia in some humans? And even if the hypothesis does hold up, it would only account for some cases of schizophrenia, while the cause of others would remain undiscovered. But still...the idea that parasites are tinkering with humanity's personality--perhaps even giving rise to cultural diversity--is taking over my head like a bad case of Toxoplasma.
Obviously a LOT of people on this planet are being "taken over" by Ponerogenic processes. It is quite amazing to observe and perhaps this article suggests a line of research. The psychopath's ability to confuse and dominate a normal person is based, I think, on something similar to what happens to a mouse when it senses a cat nearby.Millions of years of evolution have built a defense mechanism into the mouse that makes it stay as far away from cats and other predators as possible. Here we see that a bacteria can shift that defense mechanism and maybe even turn it off.
In any event, what is observed is that if a mouse does not manage to stay clear of the cat, it freezes which may be an evolutionary survival strategy: play dead and the cat will go away since cat's like to play with their food before eating it.
Well, what if there is a REAL inbuilt evolutionary survival mechanism in human beings similar to that in animals that - under proper conditions - would warn us about psychopaths, but for various reasons having to do with social and religious programming, does not? We are so completely programmed to believe that anybody that looks like a human being IS a fully functional human being with a full complement of all the attributes of same, including conscience. But what if there is some part of us that still operates on the evolutionary survival instincts which we manage to suppress most of the time, but now and again is triggered by certain behaviors of psychopaths? And when it is triggered, a whole cascade of other functions come into play? Let's look at what Lobaczewski says about the "special talents" of the psychopath:
In spite of their deficiencies as regards normal psychological and moral knowledge, they develop and then have at their disposal a knowledge of their own, something lacked by people with a natural worldview.
They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them.
They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, take a paraspecific variety.
Natural human reactions - which often fail to elicit interest because they are considered self-evident - strike psychopaths as strange and therefore interesting, even comical. They therefore observe us, deriving conclusions, forming their different world of concepts.
They become experts in our weaknesses and sometimes effect heartless experiments upon us. … Neither a normal person nor our natural worldview can perceive or properly evaluate the existence of this world of different concepts. ...
Our first contact [with the psychopath] is characterized by a talkative stream which flows with ease and avoids truly important matters with equal ease if they are uncomfortable for the talker. His train of thought also avoids those matters of human feelings and values whose representation is absent in the psychopathic world view. […] From the logical point of view, the flow of thought is ostensibly correct…
The world of normal people whom they hurt is incomprehensible and hostile to them. […] [Life to the psychopath] is the pursuit of its immediate attractions, pleasure and power. They meet with failure along this road, along with force and condemnation from the society of those other incomprehensible people....
In any society in this world, psychopathic individuals and some of the other deviants create a ponerogenically active network of common collusions, partially estranged from the community of normal people. Some inspirational role of the essential psychopathy in this network also appears to be a common phenomenon.
They are aware of being different as they obtain their life experience and become familiar with different ways of fighting for their goals. Their world is forever divided into “us and them” - their world with its own laws and customs and that other foreign world full of presumptuous ideas and customs in light of which they are condemned morally.
Their “sense of honor” bids them cheat and revile that other human world and its values. In contradiction to the customs of normal people, they feel non-fulfillment of their promises or obligations is customary behavior.
They also learn how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of those normal people, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of reaching their goals....
Essential psychopathy has exceptionally intense effects in this manner. Something mysterious gnaws into the personality of an individual at the mercy of the psychopath, and it is fought like a demon. His emotions become chilled, his sense of psychological reality is stifled. This leads to decriterialization of thought and a feeling of helplessness culminating in depressive reactions which can be so severe that psychiatrists sometimes misdiagnose them as a manic-depressive psychosis. Lobaczewski
Now notice particularly this:
They also learn how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of those normal people, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of reaching their goals....
In another place in his book, Lobaczewski talks about the effect of the psychopath on normal human beings in terms of what actually transpires in the brain.
When the human mind comes into contact with this new reality so different from any experiences encountered by a person raised in a society dominated by normal people, it releases psychophysiological shock symptoms in the human brain with a higher tonus of cortex inhibition and a stifling of feelings, which then sometimes gush forth uncontrollably.
Human minds work more slowly and less keenly because the associative mechanisms have become inefficient.
Especially when a person has direct contact with [a psychopath], who use their specific experience so as to traumatize the minds of the “others” with their own personalities, his mind succumbs to a state of short-term catatonia.
The [psychopath's] humiliating and arrogant techniques, brutal paramoralizations, and so forth deaden his thought processes and his self-defense capabilities, and their divergent experiential method anchors in his mind. ...
Only once these unbelievably unpleasant psychological states have passed, thanks to rest in benevolent company, is it possible to reflect, always a difficult and painful process, or to become aware that one’s mind and common sense have been fooled by something which cannot fit into the normal human imagination.
Notice that the psychopath is able to use his "special knowledge" to "deaden the thought processes self-defense capabilities" of the normal person.
Well, what if this is not entirely psychological? What if certain behaviors trigger the evolutionary survival mechanism that is part of the older structures of the brain? What if this paralysis, this catatonia is similar to the "freezing" of the mouse when it encounters the cat? What if this is our "sign," our warning that we are dealing with a psychopath???
The other thing of note is where Lobaczewski says that, while the person is "frozen" and effectively helpless, the "divergent experiential method anchors in the mind" of the normal person. For a long time I have noticed this phenomenon which I always described as "putting psychic hooks" into a person. This is actually a terrible thing because it is similar to the cat reaching out with a paw and holding the mouse down to begin toying with it prior to eating. In human psychological terms, it serves to "stall" them, like a frequency that prevents them from seeing what is being done to them and how or why. Let's call it the production of a "stalling frequency," or a "frequency fence" which includes the paralysis and "anchoring" of psychophagic concepts in the mind of the normal person
One of the big questions is how to overcoming the stalling frequency, and , Lobaczewski offers some helpful information:
If a person with a normal instinctive substratum and basic intelligence has already heard and read about such a system of ruthless autocratic rule “based on a fanatical ideology”, he feels he has already formed an opinion on the subject. However, direct confrontation with the phenomenon causes him to feel intellectually helpless. All his prior imaginings prove to be virtually useless; they explain next to nothing. This provokes a nagging sensation that he and the society in which he was educated were quite naive.
Anyone capable of accepting this bitter void with an awareness of his own nescience, which would do a philosopher proud, can also find an orientation path within this deviant world. However, egotistically protecting his world-view habits from disintegrative disillusionment and attempting to combine them with observations from this new divergent reality only reaps mental chaos. The latter has produced unnecessary conflicts and disillusionment with the new rulership in some people; others have subordinated themselves to the pathological reality. One of the differences observed between a normally resistant person and somebody who has undergone a transpersonification is that the former is better able to survive this disintegrating cognitive void, whereas the latter fills the void with the pathologic propaganda material, and without sufficient controls.....
Notice here that Lobaczewski mentions that there are people who attempt to combine their observations of psychopathy with their own world view, such as attempting to impose their "everyone has a soul and we just have to figure out what is wrong with these people and save them" shtick, only end up being in chaos. It could be said that the same chaotic state is common to those people who have been in a state of internal conflict and discomfort when dealing with psychophages and keep trying to blame themselves or try to "fix" things.
What is important is that those who have this problem of internal confusion and chaos are those who probably have the WILL to resist and that is what the confusion and chaos is about: the instinctive substratum is screaming: "PREDATOR" and the conscious mind's programming is saying "It's not a predator, it is a human being and I just need to figure out how to fix him/her." This conflict is what produces the "extremely unpleasant psychological states" that Lobaczewski has described: the freezing, the loss of ability to think, the mental catatonia, followed by the "anchoring" of psychopathic material.
Notice also that he mentions those that undergo what he calls "transpersonification." These are the people in whom the psychopathic material "anchors" and because they have never been able to fully accept the reality of what we can plainly call "evil personified," because they can't let go of the idea that "all are one" and "we only need love" or "let's just all get along and play nice" or "I can fix it" or they have some emotional investment in preserving the status quo, then that void is not filled with the TRUTH of the situation based on FACTS. And so, with a void inside, they are subject to having that void filled with pathologic material. They have no controls.
But, getting back to the people who do have a big conflict and who are capable of the will to resist being "assimilated, (probably because they have the WILL in there in the first place), even if they are weary and scarred from battle, there is much hope because by dealing with the phenomenon directly, they seem to be "inoculated." As Lobaczewski describes it:
Only once these unbelievably unpleasant psychological states have passed, thanks to rest in benevolent company, is it possible to reflect, always a difficult and painful process, or to become aware that one’s mind and common sense have been fooled by something which cannot fit into the normal human imagination.
He also taoks a bit about the value of individuals who have been "inoculated" by first hand experience:
The specific role of certain individuals during such times is worth pointing out; they participated in the discovery of the nature of this new reality and helped others find the right path.
They had a normal nature but an unfortunate childhood, being subjected very early to the domination of individuals with various psychological deviations, including pathological egotism and methods of terrorizing others.
The new rulership system struck such people as a large-scale societal multiplication of what they knew from individual experience. From the very outset, they therefore saw this reality much more prosaically, immediately treating the ideology in accordance with the paralogistic stories well known to them, whose purpose was to cloak bitter reality of their youth experiences. They soon reached the truth, since the genesis and nature of evil are analogous irrespective of the social scale in which it appears.
Such people are rarely understood in happy societies, but there they became useful; their explanations and advice proved accurate and were transmitted to others joining the network of this apperceptive heritage. However, their own suffering was doubled, since this was too much of a similar kind of abuse for one life to handle. ...
Finally, society sees the appearance of individuals who have collected exceptional intuitive perception and practical knowledge in the area of how pathocrats think and such a system of rule operates.
That is what we hope to do here. It seems to me that this is the most important thing to do at this time. As Lobaczewski writes:
Man and society stands at the beginning of a long road of unknown experiences which, after much trial and error, finally leads to a certain hermetic knowledge of what the qualities of the phenomenon are and how best to build up psychological resistance thereto. ....
We shall thereupon observe psychological phenomena, knowledge, immunization, and adaptation such as could not have been predicted before and which cannot be understood in the world remaining under the rule of normal man’s systems.
A normal person, however, can never completely adapt to a pathological system; it is easy to be pessimistic about the final results of this.
Such experiences are exchanged during evening discussions among a circle of friends, thereby creating within people’s minds a kind of cognitive conglomeration which is initially incoherent and contains factual deficiencies. ...
Moral and religious values, as well as a nation’s centuries-old cultural heritage, furnish most societies with support for the long road of both individual and collective searching through the jungle of strange phenomena. However, this apperceptive capacity possessed by people within the framework of the natural world-view contains a deficiency which hides the nucleus of the phenomenon for many years. Under such conditions, both instinct and feelings, and the resulting basic intelligence, play instrumental roles, stimulating man to make selections which are to a great extent subconscious.
Under the conditions created by imposed pathocratic rule in particular, where the just described psychological deficiencies are decisive in joining the activities of such a system, our natural human instinctive substratum is an instrumental factor in joining the opposition. Similarly, the environmental, economic, and ideological motivations which influenced the formation of an individual personality, including those political attitudes which were assumed earlier, play the role of modifying factors which are not as enduring in time. The activity of these latter factors, albeit relatively clear with relation to individuals, disappear within the statistical approach and diminish through the years of pathocratic rule.
The decisions and the way selections made for the side of the society of normal people are once again finally decided by factors usually inherited by biological means, and thus not the product of the person’s option, and predominantly in subconscious processes.
Man’s general intelligence, especially its intellectual level, play a relatively limited role in this process of selecting a path of action, as expressed by statistically significant but low correlation (-0.16). The higher a person’s general level of talent, the harder it usually is for him to reconcile himself with this different reality and to find a modus vivendi within it.
At the same time, gifted and talented people join the pathocracy, and harsh words of contempt for the system can be heard on the part of simple, uneducated people.
Only those people with the highest degree of intelligence, which, as mentioned, does not accompany psychopathies, are unable to find the meaning of life within such a system. They are sometimes able to take advantage of their superior mentality in order to find exceptional ways in which to be useful to others. Wasting the best talents spells eventual catastrophe for any social system.
Since those factors subject to the laws of genetics have proven decisive, society becomes divided by means of criteria not known before into the adherents of the new rule, the new middle class mentioned twice above, and the majority opposition. Since the properties which cause this new division appear in more or less equal proportions within any old social group or level, this new division cuts right through these traditional layers of society. If we treat the former stratification, whose formation was decisively influenced by the talent factor, as horizontal, the new one should be referred to as vertical. The most instrumental factor in the latter is good basic intelligence which, as we already know, is widely distributed throughout all social groups.
Even those people who were the object of social injustice in the former system and then bestowed with another system, which allegedly protected them, slowly start criticizing the latter. Even though they were forced to join the pathocratic party, most of the former prewar Communists in the author’s homeland later gradually became critical, using the most emphatic of language. They were first to deny that the ruling system was Communist in nature, persuasively pointing out the actual differences between ideology and reality. They tried to inform their comrades in still independent countries of this by letters. Worried about this “treason”, these comrades transmitted such letters to their local party, from where these were returned to the security police of the country of origin. The authors of the letters paid with their lives or with years of prison; no other social group was finally subjected to such stringent police surveillance as were they.
So the task before us is clear. It isn't easy, but it is possible.LINK
By Pamela Hess, UPI Pentagon Correspondent
Washington (UPI) Jan 20, 2006
Next month a new high-explosive amunition will be fired in Singapore and then tested again by the U.S. Army, heralding what may be a sea change in weaponry: a gun that can fire 240,000 rounds per minute.
That's compared to 60 rounds per minute in a standard military machine gun.
Metal Storm, a munitions company headquartered in Virginia but with its roots in Australia, has been developing a gun that can shoot at blistering speeds, albeit in short bursts as each barrel is reloaded.LINK
Carl Zimmer
17 Jan 06
Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people? The question emerged a few years ago, and it shows no signs of going away.
I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It's in the fluke's interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle. Another fluke, Euhaplorchis californiensis, causes infected fish to shimmy and jump, greatly increasing the chance that wading birds will grab them.
story continues
from
SOtTSHOCK waves reverberated round the Langley estate this week as residents tried to come to terms with the revelations of the suffering of the parents and children involved in the false allegations of satanic abuse more than 15 years ago.
Last week a Middleton Guardian special edition and a BBC prime-time documentary graphically illustrated how allegedly flawed interview techniques by Middleton social workers led to more than 20 children being separated from their parents, some for more than six years.
For the first time some of the victims were named and were able to give their own accounts of what happened.
This week the parents of the family that sparked off the "witch-hunt" told the Guardian there was still no closure for them. They would be fighting on to get the council to publicly admit their mistakes.
And a former Langley councillor has revealed that he warned the chairman of the Social Services Committee at the time, that the social workers were fundamentalist Christians on a mission, lacked objectivity and should be replaced.
He said the families should receive "serious compensation".
Andrew, the father of Daniel, who inadvertently sparked off the ritual abuse alert, and Julie, said that he had been gratified by the reaction of local people who had expressed their support since the programme was transmitted.
He said: "People have stopped me in the street and in the shops to say how shocked they were at the injustice we have suffered and the ordeal our family has been put through. They have seen for themselves how the social workers conducted those terrible interviews with the children.
"But there has been no complete closure for us and there will not be until the council honestly admits fully and publicly its mistakes. In the meantime we will continue our campaign for full disclosure."
Last night the family was travelling to London to appear on today’s (Thursday) "This Morning" programme on ITV.
This week a former Langley councillor, Robin Parker, told the Guardian that he tried to alert the then chairman of the Social services Committee, Councillor the Rev Paul Flowers, a clergyman, that something was going wrong.
Parker – a former Manchester City Council social services official - said: "I was a very new councillor in Rochdale at the time. I was approached by Langley councillors Kevin Hunt and Tony Heaford.
"They said that something was going very badly wrong and they were on the wrong track."
He said it was apparent that the two social workers involved were fundamentalist Christians and that could be affecting their judgement.
"I went to the chairman of Social Services and said the two social workers were on a mission and could not be objective when they believed Satan was at work, but he rejected this."
Mr Parker, who will fight the Langley seat for Labour in the forthcoming municipal elections, added: "The video interviews we saw on the BBC programme disproved the chairman’s view. The interviews were obviously flawed.
"What should happen now is that the parents and the children should be given the apology they have asked for and serious compensation considered".
It is a view endorsed by many residents of the Langley estate who believe that the estate has been wrongly maligned and that justice has yet to be done.
Langley community activist, Barbara Guisbourne-Hilton said that after 15 years of trauma for the children and their parents it was time for the council to give them a full public apology.
The mother-of-five, who lives on Windermere Road, said that when the story first broke in 1990 she found it "very frightening".
"But it soon became very apparent that there had been a gross over-reaction by the authorities," she said.
"To split the children from their parents at such an important time of their lives must have been terrible for them and left them scarred."
She said there would only be a final closure when the council came clean and the families compensated.
Carl Cooper a member of the Bowlee Park Management Board that now runs the estate said it was time for a closure.
"How can we have any confidence in social services?"
MP for Heywood and Middleton, Jim Dobbin, said that although he didn't watch last week's documentary he thought that the sooner the situation was resolved, the better.
He said: "I was on the council at the time although it was an issue that I personally was never directly involved in. The sooner this gets resolved the better, for the sake of all those that were around Langley at the time and certainly for the future of the estate, as well as for the families involved.
"I hope the whole thing is resolved amicably in due course."
David Edwards
First published by the Middleton Guardian
by Kathy Dopp
17 Jan 2006
Media Release: January 16, 2005 by the National Election Data Archive
The Gun is Smoking - 2004 Ohio Precinct-Level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount.
There is significant controversy about whether the 2004 presidential election was conducted fairly and its votes counted correctly. According to results of the major national election exit poll conducted for the National Election Pool by Edison/Mitofsky (E/M), Kerry won Ohio's pivotal vote, though the official tally gave the state, and thus the presidency, to Bush. The conduct of Ohio's election was formally debated by Congress in January 2005.
The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) is the first mathematical team to release a valid scientific analysis of the precinct-level 2004 Ohio presidential exit poll data "The Gun is Smoking: Ohio 2004 Exit Poll Discrepancies Are Consistent with Outcome-Altering Vote Miscount" available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvanalysis/oh/ohio-exit-polls-2004.pdf. NEDA's analysis provides significant evidence of an outcome-altering vote miscount.
LINK
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Jan. 13, 2006
The Alito hearing couldn't have come out better for the Republicans if the Supreme Court nominee himself had chaired the committee. Even though it was a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who brought Alito's wife to tears by asking her husband if he was "a closet bigot," the Democrats got blamed for hectoring the nominee with questions he wasn't going to answer.
The shock of the rhetorical ploy briefly drove Martha-Ann Alito from the hearing room and gave Graham the stage to defend the judge's character and bemoan the "guilt by association" tactics employed by Democrats. It turns out that Graham had a hand in helping prep Alito for the hearings, which raises the issue of whether the line was scripted.
LINK
Scientists predict melting of ice cap at North Pole
By Robert S. Boyd
KNIGHT RIDDER
WASHINGTON - Alarmed by an accelerating loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean, scientists are striving to understand why the speedup is happening and what it means for humankind.
If present trends continue, as seems likely, the sea surrounding the North Pole will be completely free of ice in the summertime within the lifetime of a child born today.
The loss could point the way to radical changes in the Earth's climate and weather systems.
Some researchers, such as Ron Lindsay, an Arctic scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, fear that the polar region already may have passed a "tipping point" from which it can't recover in the foreseeable future.
Others, such as Jonathan Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson, think the Arctic ice pack is nearing a point of no return but hasn't reached it yet.
The National Science Foundation, a congressionally chartered agency, last month announced an urgent research program to determine what "these changes mean for both the Arctic and the Earth."
"The pace of Arctic change has accelerated," the foundation declared. "Because of the Arctic's pivotal role in the Earth's climate, it is critical -- perhaps urgent -- that we understand this system in light of abundant evidence that a set of linked and pervasive changes are under way."
The concern has heightened because last summer brought a record low in the size of the northern ice pack. "The degree of retreat was greater than ever before," said Ted Scambos, chief scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Previous lows were set in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Full Story
THE NEXT WEEK WILL DECIDE IF DEMOCRACY WILL SURVIVE
Bush is now completely and certifiably out of control. But to remove the
last restraint on the creation of a new American dictatorship they must
install one more lock down vote on the Supreme Court, in the person of Sam
Alito.
Despite Alito's extreme right wing voting record and lifelong ideological
agenda, nobody expects him to show up at his hearing sporting a tail and
horns wearing a red suit. Instead he will lie and evade like some Wal-Mart
smiley face, just as he did when in his confirmation for the Court of
Appeals he promised to recuse himself from cases involving his own
investments. Then he fought to do precisely otherwise. He will make
absolutely any misrepresentation of his views and his agenda to try to sneak
past public accountability yet again, while his record shouts otherwise. And
only your voices speaking out now can turn the tide against this judicial
coup.
LINK
We are planning a two-stage action. First with the action page above we
will build a consensus that ANY replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor must be
no worse than a true moderate and centrist. Then after the conclusion of
the hearings we will speak out AGAIN on specific question of the final vote
in the Senate. Please submit every possible action page you can get your
hands on, and keep speaking out until we prevail, just as we did on ANWR and
the torture prohibition.
But remember that Alito was the author of the tactic of Bush trying to spin
acts of Congress with so-called "signing statements" in hopes that some
future Supreme Court (including now guess who) would give them weight over
the will of the people. And Bush did just that with the anti-torture bill,
declaring that he really didn't consider himself bound at all. Every day
from now on must be STOP Alito day, otherwise our democracy is doomed.
LINK
Even if you have submitted something else recently, please go to the page
above and take a moment to submit it. There are lots of good references in
the arguments section below the form if you would like some additional
support or ideas for your personal comments, or just cast your vote with one
click and go. We have nearly 100,000 participants in our system and we are
counting on at least 25,000 of you to speak out now. This battle must be
won, there must be a filibuster, or all else will be ultimately lost.
NEW UPDATED DESKTOP ACTION PROGRAM AVAILABLE NOW
To help us get as close as possible to 100% submission yield on this
question we have made many improvements on the Desktop Action program since
its initial release last week. With this program you can speak out directly
from your desktop with just one click! Based on your input we have set the
program to always be minimized unless you expressly click on its icon, we
have now made the interface draggable, and incorporated all of your other
suggestions. Though it worked well for most people from day one, we have
corrected all minor issues with contact setup and system reboots, and all
these small fixes have been confirmed corrected. Even if you already have
the program, please download the latest update (1.05) from the main index
page at
LINK
RUN FOR OFFICE YOURSELF OR FIND US SOMEONE WHO IS
We received many inquiries from candidates who want to win, and we are
setting everybody up with their easy-to-use forms for creating action forms
on your own campaign web site. The most important thing you can do is
launch your own STOP Alito initiative to show your constituents how much you
are out there fighting for them now, and not just talking about what you
WOULD do if elected. Build your track record and prominence identified as
someone out there fighting to protect the rights of the people. Contact us
at once and we will set you up. There is no charge for any of our services
ever.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be
ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.
6:29 pm EST January 10, 2006
Investigators in Dallas are trying to determine what has caused the water in the Trinity River to turn reddish orange twice in one week, according to a Local 6 News report.
Authorities said the colored water was first reported the day the University of Texas played for the NCAA National Championship in the Rose Bowl. However, officials cannot determine if the two events are related, Local 6 News reported.
The orange water apparently came from treated sewage that was dumped back into the Trinity River.
Officials at the Trinity River Authority said they are not sure how it made it into the water supply.
The Environmental Agency in Texas has reassured nearby residents that the drinking water is safe.
Investigators said contaminating water is illegal and they will continue to search for the cause, according to the report.
07 January 2006
By Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Things have been pretty interesting around here in the past week. Seems that Joe Quinn's critique of the Above Top Secret forum posting about the 757 that did NOT hit the Pentagon has hit a nerve.The first indication that we had that something was up was the fact that the Signs of The Times site statistics had a bit of a surge.
Now we keep a pretty good eye on our site statistics because we like to know what subjects really interest our readers. So when there is a surge, we know we are doing our job. This is most particularly true with the publication of the Pentagon Strike video: obviously, so many people "resonated" to the facts presented in this video that the current number of viewers is approacing 600 million.
Yes, that's right: 600 MILLION. It will soon be one of the most widely disseminated items ever to be published on the internet.
For the "Powers That Be," that's a problem.
Enter: Above Top Secret Forum.
Well, actually, we hadn't really paid too much attention to the ATS forum until it became almost a daily event for someone to send us, or post to our modest discussion forum, the link to this ATS post by "CatHerder." Gee, even the name of the poster gives a COIINTELPRO impression; imagine someone trying to herd cats?! That's probably how the PTB view people - a bunch of disorderly cats that need to be herded in a particular direction.
Anyway, after the first time or two that the link was posted to our forum, then people began to try to post the entire article. Well, the fact is, we are in the news publishing business because we intend it as a teaching tool, and we try to check material for validity and to weed out as many lies as possible so our readers don't have to waste a lot of their valuable time reading garbage. Unlike sites such as Rense.com and others, we DO try to publish responsibly. If we utilize mainstream articles that we suspect are "agenda slanted," we try to add comments pointing out the obvious, or at least publish such an article juxtaposed against another that makes clear the agenda. We also use flashbacks to remind readers that a current article may be sayig something exactly the opposite of what was said a few weeks, months, or even years ago. In short, our idea is to help readers learn to think, to spot the deceptions, and to develop or refine their own internal BS meters. So, as a result of our approach, we DO keep a close eye on our statistics so that we know what items interest the greatest number of people which then prompts us to do more research on those items so as to bring to our readers more material that will satisfy that desire for information.
The result of this statistical analysis is the fact that we KNOW that hundreds of millions of people do NOT believe that a 757 hit the Pentagon. They would not be avidly sharing the Pentagon Strike video with their family, friends, acquaintances, to the extent that they have done so if they were not trying to use it as a way of communicating something that is difficult to put into words, not to mention dangerous considering the Fascist takeover of America by Bush and the Neocons.
Getting back to Above Top Secret Forum: as I said, we hadn't really paid a lot of attention to them at all up to this point in time when a cadre of what we think of as COINTELPRO "floaters" hadn't been repeatedly trying to force us to publish the ATS CatHerder piece on our own website. Based on our assessment of the piece, it would have been the same thing as publishing - and giving credibility to - disinformation. We simply weren't going to do it - without commentary as we do when we publish any piece that we consider to be "agenda directed."
In the end, that was exactly what we did: we published it with commentary.
I rather think that if we had published it as a regular news piece on the Signs of The Times daily pages with NO comment, what happened next would not have happened.
But first, let me mention that we did get a lot of positive feedback on the article from readers, including several entries to our discussion forum, one of which really made us laugh:
I want a bumper sticker and a t-shirt that reads.... Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 and Neither Did a Boeing 757
We just may see what we can do about that! I expect that such an item would sell in the millions based on the popularity of the Pentagon Strike video dissemination stats!
Now, off to the side, I was, at that moment in time, involved in a discussion with a couple of well-known Anti-war activists about my previous blog post: How to Spot COINTELPRO Agents I had written on Jan 3rd:
I have been thinking about a lot of things over the past few days and decided to make an experimental post to my blog. It was an interesting exercise because re-reading and re-thinking always leads to new understanding.
One of the things that stood out for me in the section about Rick Ross and his "cult awareness network" was this from the Cletus Nelson piece I included (published on The Lew Rockwell site):
**********
"Evidence suggests that these unsubstantiated claims which continue to shade our perception of the events at Mt. Carmel can be attributed to a small cadre of para-political "watchdog" groups.
.....
... in the lucrative realm of public policy activism lurk a number of pro- government advocacy groups whose very existence rests upon the notion that cult activities, political extremism or some other unnamed evil constitutes a dangerous threat to state power.
In order to identify the alleged thought criminals in our midst, operatives aligned with these private surveillance networks infiltrate unconventional spiritual or religious movements, maintain files on American citizens, and work closely with both media and law enforcement to target individuals and organizations whose beliefs run counter to establishmentarian beliefs.
In essence, these ersatz defenders of human rights act as de facto spokesmen for our emergent surveillance society. It’s COINTELPRO redux, only this time with help from a network of dubious, yet-well compensated agents.
***********
Even though I already *knew* that it was so at some level, I hadn't really given much conscious thought to the fact that so-called "watchdog groups" that rant "cult, cult, cult" [or a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon] are evidently aligned with the National Security State as this article suggests.
In short, any group or individual who goes around with the kinds of rants that Weidner, Bridges (and his buddy Storm Bear Williams and gang)do, are clearly "operatives" that work closely with media and law enforcement to target individuals and organizations whose beliefs run counter to the state sanctioned Mind Control System.
We have to learn how to sort the true from the false.
Nobody was greener than I was back in summer 2001 when it all began... and if it hadn't been for the C's, I would already be toast. But I learned a lot while skirting the edges of disaster and one of the things that has stood me in good stead is a little hint from Gurdjieff:
"A decent man will behave decently even if he thinks that he has been treated unjustly or wrongly. But many people in such circumstances show a side of their nature which otherwise they would never show. And at times it is a necessary means for exposing a man's nature. So long as you are good to a man he is good to you. But what will he be like if you scratch him a little?"
When dealing with COINTELPRO, you don't even have to treat someone unjustly or wrongly, generally just disagreeing with them will do. Or doing something they don't want you to do. Just small "scratches" usually sort people out.
The very next thing that happened was that we received an email from Above Top Secret as follows:
Mark - mark@abovetopsecret.com From : USA wrote : I am disgusted by your accusation that AboveTopSecret.com, LLP is a "Government funded damage control outlet" I ask that you retract that lie.
My partners and I have spent the last several years building that site and have NEVER received a nickel from ANY government, never been asked to do ANYTHING for or by ANY government and NEVER WILL.
The fact we attract logical members who present THIER analysis and ask that other members treat them with COURTEOUSNESS and keep the discussion at an ADULT level sans flames and rediculous off topic commentary does NOT make us anything more or less than what we are. The number ONE destination on the internet to FREELY Deny Ignorance.
It is truly SAD that when a site allows ALL sides of an issue to be heard people like YOU who believe hook line and sinker there is a conspiracy where there may or may not be one, feel the need to falsely accuse us of being crooked. It makes me SICK and SAD for you.
You obviously haven't read the THOUSANDS of posts that actually SUPPORT your perspective on our site, no that would be too much work wouldn't it?
Much easier to cast a negative light upon our site in the hopes of getting yourself some attention isn't it?
Thoroughly disappointed in and DISGUSTED with YOU.
Springer...
Partner,
AboveTopSecret.com, LLP
Note: the IP that was logged from this post tracks back to Geary,Oklahoma.
I forwarded the email to the group of Anti-war activists I was discussing COINTELPRO with along with the following comments:
...here is a perfect example of the principle I mentioned last night: how a person behaves when you "scratch" him a little.
"A decent man will behave decently even if he thinks that he has been treated unjustly or wrongly. But many people in such circumstances show a side of their nature which otherwise they would never show. And at times it is a necessary means for exposing a man's nature. So long as you are good to a man he is good to you. But what will he be like if you scratch him a little?"
Yes, we have read the posts that supported the conspiracy view of 9/11 on their site, but we also read their own posts where they worked very hard to make those who supported the insider complicity argument feel stupid.
This [email from AboveTopSecret reveals the same kind of outrage that comes from people like Vinnie and Jay and the gang... they are "outraged" and "sick and sad" for us and so on and so forth. Smoke and mirrors.
And of course, we are "invited" to feel guilty by accusing us of us "casting a negative light" in order to "get attention."
What he is most exercised about seems to be the suggestion that Above Top Secret is a "government funded damage control outlet." Methinks he protests too much.
Now, what would have happened if he had written to me and said: "Hey, I read your piece and even though we disagree on the subject, I would like to object to being labeled a disinfo source. I set up the site for the same reasons you have your site: to find the truth. I just don't see any evidence of what you are saying... " etc etc...
But, since he is not there to argue the evidence, but rather to promote the lies, he can't do that. And people like that only know one way to function: to seek to destroy the other views by ridicule, shaming, playing guilt cards, aggressive insults, etc. Even if they try to mask their behavior by platitudes about being adult and courteous, they belie it by their own words. In other words, they know the words, but not the music. They are blind to their own lack of courtesy to the truth.
Or, they are disinfo...
My money is on the latter.
Ark responded to Mark/Springer of AboveTopSecret as follows:
To: mark@abovetopsecret.com
Date sent: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 08:10:18 +0100
Subject: Re: Your false accusation
On 4 Jan 2006 at 0:08, mark@abovetopsecret.com wrote:
> You obviously haven't read the THOUSANDS of posts that actually SUPPORT your
> perspective on our site, no that would be too much work wouldn't it?
>
> Much easier to cast a negative light upon our site in the hopes of getting
> yourself some attention isn't it?
>
> Thoroughly disappointed in and DISGUSTED with YOU.
Well, if you are welcoming posts supporting our perspective, than you should be also happy (rather than disapointed and disgusted) that there is another view supporting our perspective - namely OUR view.
Regards,
ark
##################################################
Dr Arkadiusz Jadczyk
http://quantumfuture.net/quantum_future/homepage.htm
The next day, an email came from another AboveTopSecret "partner" - to Ark's private email address rather than the site address. Obviously, he got this from Mark/Springer, above.
To: ark@cassiopaea.org
Subject: Your 9/11 article on your website...
Send reply to:
From: "SkepticOverlord"
Date sent: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 07:56:16 -0600
Greetings...
It has come to our attention that your article here:
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Above_Top_Secret_article.htm Is in violation of our clearly stated Creative Commons Deed, linked here:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.php?tid=79655&pid=816414 You have developed a derivative work (your content, integrated with our content) for commercial purposes (to promote the sale of a book.)
This is in clear violation of our stated license. The concept of "fair use" does not apply in this case since your current utilization of our material is in clear violation of our stated use rights.
However, in the interest of balanced debate on this subject, we do not necessarily desire the material to be removed from your site. We would be happy to see it to remain if you would kindly make the following changes: 1) Comply with the "BY:" attribute of our Creative Commons Deed (proper link and attribution). 2) Alter the HTML file name so that it does not contain our site name. 3) Alter the images directory so that it does not contain our site name. 4) Remove the text link at the bottom that promotes the sale of a book in context with your article (the banner link at the left for the same book can certainly remain since it is not in context with the text of your article).
Thank you in advance for your consideration and cooperation.
Bill,
aka "SkepticOverlord"
Community and Technology Director
Partner in AboveTopSecret.com, LLP
Note: Skeptic Overlord's email came from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nothing unusual about that.
Since there was already clear identification of the author and source of the article in the first paragraph of our article, including an ACTIVE LINK to same, it seemed to us that the primary issue that AboveTopSecret had with us was the naming of the file and images folder on our website. Anyone familiar with our website knows that there are thousands of files, most of which are named after the subject matter they contain, which is the easiest way for us (or anyone) to keep track of them. If we want to find a file and make a correction, addition, or whatever, that's how we find it in the list.
Now why, we asked ourselves, would AboveTopSecret be concerned about the name of the file and the name of the images folder on our website?
There was only one obvious answer: they were concerned about search engines, that a search engine would display a link to our damning analysis of their Pro-government agenda among the returns given to anyone searching for "Above Top Secret." In short, they wanted to "own" the phrase and to monopolize the views of readers.
Not a very good example of their claimed desire to present "all sides of a question," now is it?
So, Ark replied:
To: skepticoverlord@abovetopsecret.com
Subject: Re: Your 9/11 Article
Date sent: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 18:14:36 +0100
On 5 Jan 2006 at 14:16, skepticoverlord@abovetopsecret.com wrote:
> It has come to our attention that your article here:
> http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Above_Top_Secret_article.htm
>
> Is in violation of our clearly stated Creative Commons Deed, linked here:
>
> http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.php?tid=79655&pid=816414
>
Hi,
Sorry to say, but what you say does not make any sense whatsoever.
Can you explain? Do you mean that it is your policy to be a governement agency? Or what?
Regards,
ark
Skeptic Overlord was fast on the draw. He responded:
From: "SkepticOverlord"
Copies to: simon.gray@abovetopsecret.com
Date sent: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:54:17 -0600
For now I'll ignore the insult and try to remain cordial.
From our vantage point, the manner in which you presented the content of your article here:
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Above_Top_Secret_article.htm
Appears to be designed to capitalize on our content both for commercial purposes (the selling of a book) and user confusion (file and directory names "above_top_secret").
For now, we're hoping to assume that non-compliance with our Creative Commons License (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.php?tid=79655&pid=816414 ) is accidental. And that no malicious intent is behind using our unique site name in the naming conventions of your content.
(More information on creative commons here: http://creativecommons.org/ )
The non-compliance is related to two issues:
1) Your author, Joe Quinn, and has developed a derivative work based on our material. This is not allowed under the terms of the linked CC deed. 2) Our content is used in conjunction with solicitation for the sale of a book titled, "9/11: The Ultimate Truth". This is also a violation of the terms in our linked CC deed.
The CC deed link is provided at the bottom of every piece of content on our site, and clearly provides information on how our material can be reused.
In addition, including our site name as a part of the naming system for the HTML file and subdirectories is indicative of potential malicious intent to confuse web surfers and search engines. We hope this is accidental.
We believe our request for changes to be in the spirit of collaborative debate on these important issues. Rather than insist our content be removed (which is within our rights under the clearly stated usage guidelines), we're asking for the following: 1) Comply with the "BY:" attribute of our Creative Commons Deed (proper link and attribution). 2) Alter the HTML file name so that it does not contain our site name. 3) Alter the images directory so that it does not contain our site name. 4)Remove the text link at the bottom that promotes the sale of a book in context with your article (the banner link at the left for the same book can certainly remain since it is not in context with the text of your article).
Thank you.
"SkepticOverlord"
Community and Technology Director
Partner in AboveTopSecret.com, LLP
So, we were right: there is was, explicitly stated: "including our site name as a part of the naming system for the HTML file and subdirectories is indicative of potential malicious intent to confuse web surfers and search engines. We hope this is accidental."
They apparently do NOT wish for any alternative view of what they are promoting to be available. Control of search engine results is what they are after. That suggests some serious COINTELPRO thinking has gone into the website AboveTopSecret, especially in terms of vectoring websearches and seekers of information. Ark was curious about these two approaches, the "good cop, bad cop" routine. So, he wrote back to "Skeptic Overlord," (geez, that "handle" is sure suggestive too!)
Notice also that a CC of the above email has been sent to a "Simon Gray." Hmmmm.... Who is Simon Gray? We'll get to that soon enough...
From: Arkadiusz Jadczyk
To:
Subject: Re: Your 9/11 Article
BCC to: sott@signs-of-the-times.org
Date sent: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 19:20:21 +0100
> For now I'll ignore the insult and try to remain cordial.
Hi,
Does that mean that you do not agree with the Mark (mark@abovetopsecret.com ) who wrote to us:
"Much easier to cast a negative light upon our site in the hopes of getting yourself some attention isn't it?
Thoroughly disappointed in and DISGUSTED with YOU."
I undestand from his letter that he (or you?) was not happy with our criticism, but he did not provide any argument why our tentative conclusion was incorrect.
Now you seem to provide arguments that our tentative conclusion was correct, right?
So, if I am correct, in a sense you are arguing with mark@abovetopsecret.com.
Can't you guys solve these problems within your institution?
Regards,
ark
Skeptic Overlord replied:
From: "SkepticOverlord"
Copies to: simon.gray@abovetopsecret.com
Date sent: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:41:10 -0600
I'm not aware of what Mark had sent you. However, is has no bearing on the reality that your article violates our published usage rights.
In my position as Community Director, I have no desire to debate which point of view is more valid or not, only to resolve the issues I've outlined in both of my emails.
Pleased indicate your intent specific to the concerns I've communicated.
Thank you.
Ark forwarded the comments of Mark/Springer to Skeptic Overlord who then responded:
From: "Arkadiusz Jadczyk"
To: "SkepticOverlord"
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 06:01 PM
Subject: Your 9/11 Article
> I'm not aware of what Mark had sent you.
OK,
Here it is:
[Mark/Springer's email snipped]
And here is what I wrote back to him:
"Well, if you are welcoming posts supporting our perspective, than you should be also happy (rather than disapointed and disgusted) that there is another view supporting our perspective - namely OUR view."
I still keep the same attitude. Only through an open discussion and analyzing all the available data there is any hope of ever getting to the truth.
Kind regards,
ark
One thing that was becoming abundantly clear was that AboveTopSecret.com was NOT the least bit interested in really searching for the truth of anything. So far, their only issues were commercial and suppressing competition of information. We next received an email from another stranger who wrote:
Date sent: 5 Jan 2006 18:23:38 -0000
To: Arkadiusz Jadczyk
From: computerbball23@yahoo.com
Subject: ATS catherder article rebuttal
Amar - computerbball23@yahoo.com From : USA : California wrote :
I was wondering if you would please comply with ATS's terms of service and creative commons license so that we can discuss your debunking article of Catherder's Pentagon plane crash article. I am not a government agent and neither is Skeptic's Overlord of AboveTopSecret. I am just a normal human being that is wanting a fair argument on what really happened at the pentagon and using your article to discuss the controversy at ATS will help a lot, but we can only use your website if you comply with ATS's rules.
thank you,
Amar
Well, since we had, as far as we knew, from the beginning, complied with the legal requirements of Fair Use for criticism and analysis,(including source and link), it seemed that the AboveTopSecret forum Overlords were putting pressure on members of their own forum to put pressure on us so they could discuss our analysis of CatHerder's disinfo piece in the forum that claimed to be willing to discuss all sides of an issue! Ark decided to see if he find out what was really going on:
To: skepticoverlord
Date sent: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 20:26:10 +0100
Subject: Re: Your 9/11 Article
On 5 Jan 2006 at 13:05, SkepticOverlord wrote:
> As requested, please focus on the issues I've itemed in my emails.
>
> Thanks.
Hi,
Just a while ago I got the following:
[Amar's message, quoted above, snipped]
Can you tell me who is "Amar"? Or is it you in disguise? The IP suggest the second conjecture...
ark
At the same time, we decided, in the spirit of cooperation, to see if we could come to an agreement. Ark wrote the following:
From: Arkadiusz Jadczyk
To: skepticoverlord@abovetopsecret.com,
mark@abovetopsecret.com,
computerbball23@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Your 9/11 Article
Date sent: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:13:44 +0100
Hi,
here is the more technical part:
On 5 Jan 2006, at 11:54, SkepticOverlord wrote: > > >From our vantage point, the manner in which you presented the content of > >your article here: > http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/Above_Top_Secret_article.htm > Appears to be designed to capitalize on our content both for commercial > purposes (the selling of a book) and user confusion (file and directory names > "above_top_secret").
The intent of the article is self-evident: education and, to some extent, parody.
> > For now, we're hoping to assume that non-compliance with our Creative Commons > License ( http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/cc.php?tid=79655&pid=816414 ) > is accidental. And that no malicious intent is behind using our unique site > name in the naming conventions of your content.
"Above Top Secret" is a common phrase, long in use.
> > (More information on creative commons here: http://creativecommons.org/ ) > > The non-compliance is related to two issues: > 1) Your author, Joe Quinn, and has developed a derivative work based on our > material. This is not allowed under the terms of the linked CC deed.
Joe Quinn's work is not "derivative." It is transformative commentary and parody. In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized Transformative in Character as being a primary indicator of fair use.
* Has the material been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
* Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?
In a parody, for example, the parodist transforms the original by holding it up to ridicule. Purposes such as scholarship, research or education may also qualify as transformative.
All of these apply in this instance.
2) Our > content is used in conjunction with solicitation for the sale of a book > titled, "9/11: The Ultimate Truth". This is also a violation of the terms in > our linked CC deed.
It is not a violation of copyright law.
> > The CC deed link is provided at the bottom of every piece of content on our > site, and clearly provides information on how our material can be reused.
Thanks. We'll stick with standard copyright law.
> > In addition, including our site name as a part of the naming system for the > HTML file and subdirectories is indicative of potential malicious intent to > confuse web surfers and search engines. We hope this is accidental.
From our point of view, it is the simplest way to identify the file in the many thousands of files on our website(s).
> > We believe our request for changes to be in the spirit of collaborative > debate on these important issues. Rather than insist our content be removed > (which is within our rights under the clearly stated usage guidelines), we're > asking for the following: 1) Comply with the "BY:" attribute of our Creative > Commons Deed (proper link and attribution).
As soon as the webmaster returns from Ireland, we'll have him make the requested changes.
2) Alter the HTML file name so > that it does not contain our site name.
Sorry, but that is not possible. As noted above, it is the easiest way to identify the file among the many thousands of files on our website(s).
3) Alter the images directory so that > it does not contain our site name.
Sorry, but that is not possible. As noted above, it is the easiest way to identify the files among the many thousands of files on our website(s).
4) Remove the text link at the bottom that > promotes the sale of a book in context with your article (the banner link at > the left for the same book can certainly remain since it is not in context > with the text of your article).
In the spirit of cooperation, we will agree to this request.
Regards,
ark
The only response was the following:
To: Arkadiusz Jadczyk
Subject: Re: Your 9/11 Article
From: "SkepticOverlord"
Date sent: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 21:40:13 -0600
Please confirm if this is your correct mailing address:
Laura Jadczyk
Dluga 40 m3
Castenau Barbarens, 32450
FR
(Obtained from the public domain record)
Thank you.
Now, let's come back to the all-important question: Who is Simon Gray???
As it happens, a little investigation produces the following WhoIs information about AboveTopSecret.com:
Registrant:
Gray, Simon
1 Sackville Close
Swindon, Wiltshire SN3 3EJ
UK
Domain Name: ABOVETOPSECRET.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Gray, Simon simon.gray@abovetopsecret.com
1 Sackville Close
Swindon, Wiltshire SN3 3EJ
UK
+44 1793 486619 fax: 999 999 9999
Record expires on 19-May-2013.
Record created on 18-May-1997.
Database last updated on 6-Jan-2006 08:22:18 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS4.DNSMADEEASY.COM 216.88.44.132
NS3.DNSMADEEASY.COM 64.246.42.123
NS2.DNSMADEEASY.COM 66.80.146.131
NS1.DNSMADEEASY.COM 69.10.137.166
NS0.DNSMADEEASY.COM 66.80.146.130
What is MOST interesting is that the information on this WhoIs entry was updated on 6 January 2006. Wonder what triggered that? I also wondered what it said before January 6, 2006?
There happens to be an interesting post on a discussion forum named BELOWTopSecret.com (thread name: ABOVETOPSECRET.COM CIA)as follows:
I did a trace route on http://www.abovetopsecret.com/, the Node Name is listed and maintained by the government.
IP Address
213.206.128
213.206.129
213.206.130
Node Name
Gov-bb21-lan-14
Gov-bb22-lan-15
Gov-bb23-lan-16
Location
Langley, Virginia
MS
60
Network Used
whois.nic.mil (for military network information)
It was difficult to get the IP Address, It was spoofed and looped over 9 times. Anyway Langley, Virginia is where the CIA headquarters is. I�m more than concerned.
The discussion on that board is interesting because we notice "Springer" there and a general "ha ha that was a great joke" attitude about the above quoted "find." More interestingly, we discover the raw whois output for belowtopsecret.com:
Registrant:
Gray, Simon
1 Sackville Close
Swindon, Wiltshire SN3 3EJ
UK
Domain Name: BELOWTOPSECRET.COM
Administrative Contact:
Gray, Simon simon.gray@abovetopsecret.com
1 Sackville Close
Swindon, Wiltshire SN3 3EJ
UK
+44 1793 486619 fax: 999 999 9999
Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, LLC. customerservice@networksolutions.com
13200 Woodland Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20171-3025
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 571-434-4620
Record expires on 21-Oct-2013.
Record created on 21-Oct-2003.
Database last updated on 7-Jan-2006 06:48:53 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS3.DNSMADEEASY.COM 64.246.42.123
NS4.DNSMADEEASY.COM 216.88.44.132
NS2.DNSMADEEASY.COM 66.80.146.131
NS1.DNSMADEEASY.COM 69.10.137.166
NS0.DNSMADEEASY.COM 66.80.146.130
Again we notice that the WhoIs database was updated just today, January 7, 2006. Seems that the issue of whether or not AboveTopSecret may be COINTELPRO has provoked a flurry of "updating" activity.
Again we wonder: Who is Simon Gray?
On the AboveTopSecret website you will find the following:
ATS Weekly: Edition 001 July 19, 2005
A Word From Our Founder This is a fantastic time for AboveTopSecret.com. Over the past few years we have seen tremendous growth in many ways, most notably in terms of the sheer amount of people who visit the ATS websites. These people have formed together into a collective virtual community, and together have expanded the wealth of information on our website to nearly a quarter of a million accessible pages, making us one of the most highly regarded websites of our genre.
Moderator's Musings When thinking about what to write here, the first thing I thought about was how much I personally appreciate ATS. So this little article is a BIG thank you to everyone that makes ATS what it is. Thanks to Simon for creating ATS. Thanks to SkepticOverlord for the continued work to improve and protect the site. Thanks to the Staff who do a wonderful job keeping the quality of input here the best on the Net.
The Council Report Hi! This is the first of a series of short columns the Council staff will be contributing in the coming months. Here we will seek to give you an overall view of what the Council is up to. I've volunteered to kick off the column with my thick prose, but other Council staff members will be presenting their comments in future columns.
What's New at ATS ATS is happy to announced a long anticipated foray into the incredibly divisive and heady world of the Creationistm and Evolution controversy. Many threads relevant to creationism, evolution, and origins in general have been moved out of their original forums and transplanted into this new forum, where they have been actively revived, while new threads on new subjects are adding up at a great pace.
From the Front Office Welcome to the first edition of the newly tooled and re-imagined ATS newsletter. Just twelve days ago one of your board adminstrators, William One Sac, thought it might be a good idea to resurrect Simon's old email newsletter. It ended up being such a good (and obvious) idea, several people worked diligently behind the scenes to make sure it happened in a way everyone could be proud of. And for members of the AboveTopSecret.com discussion board community, there's a great deal to be proud of.
Interestingly, a search on google for Simon Gray brings up the following result:
Who besides Simon Gray and the 'Bildebergers' can you source regarding US concentration camps stowing & drugging 2 million americans? & tell us Simon's credentials? TIA
Registrant:
Gray, Simon (ABOVETOPSECRET-DOM)
1 Sackville Close
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Domain Name: abovetopsecret.com
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Gray, Simon (SG2699) simon@ABOVETOPSECRET.COM
1 Sackville Close
Swindon
Wilts
SN3 3EJ
UK
(01793) 486619
Record expires on 19-May-2001.
Record created on 18-May-1997.
Database last updated on 24-Aug-2002 12:09:13 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.LIQUIDWEB.COM 64.91.224.2 NS1.LIQUIDWEB.COM 64.91.228.2
Did you notice that Sackville Close is partly in California and partly in UK? How interesting! Well, we are not going to criticize anyone for fudging on their home address. Considering the kinds of attacks that we have experienced in this "business," we don't hold it against anyone for wanting to protect themselves from lunatics.
Figuring out just who Simon Gray is has actually been turned into a promotional enterprise at AboveTopSecret.com. It looks like they are trying to create a legend.
WIN 10,000 POINTS! "Who is Simon Gray?"
William posted on 26-8-2003 at 09:50 PM
Now that we have a nice shiny new points system... let's have some fun!
Who is Simon Gray?
What does he do? What does he look like? What are his hobbies? What does he eat? Does he shave? Perhaps he fancies a certain kind of ladies under-arm deodorant?
These are the burning questions that have tormented the denizens of Above Top Secret for years-on-end.
Well, now is your chance to add the fiction that has become legend that will become myth. Help us paint the complex tapestry of the person known as, "Simon Gray" so that the legend may become larger than life... nay, larger than the planet... nay, larger than the solar system!
Post your best prose. Find your best photos. Describe your best "Simon Gray".
The winner, as judged by forum staff, will receive 10,000 bright shiny new points directly from the ATS mint. These points are good for any merchandise in the ATS store and may not be redeemed for ladies under-arm deodorant.
Well, AboveTopSecret.com begins to look like a dramatically STAGED "experiment." And I use the word "staged" deliberately. Have a look here:
Deja vu, all over again
2005 has been a year of the sequel, the remake and the revival - and no bad thing for all that
Mark Lawson
Friday December 30, 2005
The Guardian
Was 2005 the year when art ran out of ideas? December always encourages retrospection but looking back at the culture of the last 12 months constantly involves a double jump as every new idea seems to have an old one behind it.
[...] Looking at these pictures of familiarity across television, film and theatre, it's possible to argue that imagination has come to a standstill and that, from now on, writing is rewriting and the job of director becomes truly deserving of the French word répétiteur.[...]
But a more optimistic view would be that good artists have a sense of the history of their medium and that these old stories are often retold with originality: Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, though a continuation of a franchise, saw the series through new eyes, while Spielberg's War of the Worlds was a conscious post-9/11 take on alien invasion rather than a case of a film-maker borrowing inspiration from the video-shop.
A similar generosity is possible towards the number of repeats in theatre this year. These were not lazy restagings but exuberant rediscoveries, including an improbable pair of Schiller hits (Don Carlos and Mary Stuart), little-known Ibsens (Pillars of the Community) and John Osbornes (Epitaph for George Dillon), and a neglected Simon Gray (Otherwise Engaged.) All of these productions imbued the word "revival" with an almost medical meaning.
Is the Simon Gray of AboveTopSecret.com the playwright, Simon Gray?
Encyclopedia Brittanica tells us:
Simon Gray born Oct. 21, 1936, Hayling Island, Hampshire, Eng.
in full Simon James Holliday Gray British dramatist whose plays, often set in academia, are noted for their challenging storylines, witty, literary dialogue, and complex characterizations.
Gray alternately lived in Canada and England, attending Westminster School in London; Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (B.A., 1957); and Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1961). While working as a university lecturer in both countries, he wrote satiric novels and farcical plays for stage and television. His first stage play was Wise Child (1968), which features a criminal transvestite.
Gray's first international success was Butley (1971; filmed 1974), a play about a petulant university professor whose venomous wit masks an inner emptiness. Similarly, Otherwise Engaged (1975) concerns a sardonic publisher who strives to isolate himself but is prevented from doing so by a series of dramatic interruptions. Quartermaine's Terms (1981) is the sadly comic story of a gentle, ineffectual English teacher. Among Gray's other plays are Spoiled (1971), The Rear Column (1978), The Common Pursuit (1984), Hidden Laughter (1990), Cell Mates (1995), Fat Chance (1995), and Simply Disconnected (1996).
But actually, as I pursue the man, I come to the idea that the playwright, Simon Gray, is NOT the "Simon Gray" of AboveTopSecret - unless he is having a good laugh at everyone's expense:
Disgruntled drollery
Saturday March 5, 2005
The Guardian
The Smoking Diaries, by Simon Gray (Granta, £7.99)
It may be hopelessly vulgar to bring up the subject of a successful television programme when discussing this book, but when reading The Smoking Diaries there are times when it seems impossible not to think that Simon Gray is the Grumpy Old Man's Grumpy Old Man. Take, for instance, his impatient eye-rolling when he describes how a Frenchman who smacked his unruly son on the bottom in Edinburgh was jailed for a few days to teach him a lesson. "Some good may come of this," he writes; "it might teach the French to stop romanticising the Scots". Half-Scot himself, he wonders how to describe this inheritance in the most offensive manner, so disillusioned is he with them. And if disillusionment with one half of yourself is not enough, he is even impatient with synonyms: "if a synonym will do instead of the word you're using then you're probably not using the right word."
Of course, there is much more to The Smoking Diaries than grumbling. One expects a man who has, shall we say, lived fully (three bottles of champagne a day for how many years?) to be dissatisfied with the state of his hands, but there is more than one note here. In these apparently free-floating pensées-cum-memoirs (they are presented as having been written straight off - Gray loves the line "When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave" from "Hyperion", conjuring up as it does the very act of writing, the physical immediacy of it) we are also given, as well as a little snapshot of his state-of-the-nation address, any number of memories, from pederastic teachers, to childhood crimes of his own, to the closing down of his favourite restaurant.
Previous memoirs of his, such as Enter a Fox and Fat Chance, have been more theatrically minded; Gray is, after all, a playwright. Dramatists can sometimes be more fascinated with the details of their profession than non-dramatists - this is what makes Fat Chance, about Stephen Fry's disappearance from Gray's Cell Mates, more interesting to us than Enter a Fox, which has not so dramatic an incident at its core. But The Smoking Diaries is much more about what it is to be a 60-something human being than a 60-something dramatist.
There is something splendidly universal about this, and it is the core of its charm and success. One can entertain a healthy scepticism as to how off-the-cuff this stuff is, compared to how much it declares it is. In her review of the book for this paper, Jenny Diski said it was "fashioned to within an inch of its life. Not untrue, by no means untrue, but carefully formed to appear naturalistic." I am not quite so sure: it has all the fresh tang of immediate and expert recall, and there is no smell of the lamp about it.
Neither did I find this book as laugh-out-loud funny as many of the reviewers quoted on the back claim it is. To make people, well, me, laugh out loud you have to fashion jokes - which takes time. Yet it is by some way the most substantial of Gray's memoirs, with a continuous tone of disgruntled drollery that is hugely and consistently entertaining. If you were hearing him reading this out, or better still, coming out with it in real time round a dinner table, for instance, then you would, I'm fairly certain, be gasping from laughter long before the end.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if it is artless or artful, as it is so full of life, even as Gray stares mortality, his own and his friends', in the eye. At times his sentences gain the dizzy momentum of Burton's in The Anatomy of Melancholy or of Beckett's more accessible prose, and if a reminiscence that starts at point A suddenly leaps to point Q without having rested anywhere near point B, then we are happy to be taken on the journey. Pace Richard Sheridan, the easy writing's not vile hard reading. It's a book to curl up with.
Then there are excerpts from a review of the play mentioned in the above quoted Guardian article:
Otherwise Engaged By Simon Gray
Criterion Theatre
Review by Philip Fisher (2005)
In his notes in the programme, Simon Gray is at pains to deny that the protagonist in Otherwise Engaged, Simon Hench is autobiographical. Apparently, the choice of the name Simon was made because it was "the first name that came into my head". One imagines that Freudian psychologists might quite easily explain why this was the case.
One hopes that the denial really is correct as this self-centred - or, more accurately, self-obsessed - publisher is not the pleasantest of men and with 30 years perspective, the writer might reasonably be embarrassed if he really did behave like this.
There is at least one big difference between writer and subject in this production, as on opening night, Gray was to be seen just outside the theatre fervently puffing away on a beloved cigarette while Richard E Grant playing the other Simon was abstemious in this respect, if in no other.
Revivals of plays from this period are currently in vogue, especially those that look at middle-class sexual freedom amongst the intelligentsia. There is clearly a nostalgia for the 1970s which is perhaps fitting as the main players of the day are now approaching or just beyond retirement age.[...]
Director Simon Curtis is brave to take on this play in view of the fact that it was so successful when it launched in 1975 with Alan Bates playing Simon under the direction of Harold Pinter, who then took it to Broadway a couple of years later for a long run with Tom Courtenay taking over from Bates.[...]
Eventually, one realises that Simon Gray views people very much in black-and-white. His men are either happy-go-lucky philanderers, for whom success is a given, or struggling workhorses who can be used as the butt of jokes or a reminder that society has an underside. The women fare little better, being either brazen sex objects offering one night stands or sensitive but downtrodden victims.
Richard E Grant plays Simon as a cold fish who is absolutely indifferent to human kindness and has an air of permanent boredom as the world revolves around him. Humanity only begins to impinge on this man's outward impassivity towards the end of the play, following Beth's appearance.
Otherwise Engaged is beginning to show its age and some of the jokes miss completely before a 21st century audience. As a piece of social history, it may well prove successful and with well-known names in the leads and some very funny moments, could run for some time.
So much for Simon Gray, the playwright. He lives in London, as one source mentions, not Sackville Close. Problem is, NO Simon Gray lives in Sackville Close that I could discover.
So, just WHO is Simon Gray???
We find tracks of AboveTopSecret's Simon Gray rather early on the web:
Topic in alt.magick.sex
Simon Gray
Jul 6 1999, 8:00 am
Newsgroups: alt.magick.sex
From: "Simon Gray"
Date: 1999/07/06
Subject: GREAT WEBSITE
www.abovetopsecret.com !!!
Under "free.uk.info" we find another:
Newsgroups: free.uk.ufo
From: "Above Top Secret"
Date: 2000/03/22
Subject: www. Above Top Secret .com - The UK's ultimate website for US conspiracies
http://www.AboveTopSecret.com
This is the UK's ultimate conspiracy website for those interested in Area 51, secret government projects, aircraft programs including a very detailed Aurora page, agencies, and even hacking information.
Multi-award winning information.
-- Simon Gray - Webmaster/Researcher of www.AboveTopSecret.com E-Mail - s...@abovetopsecret.com
And so on. If you go to the above links, you can click "find messages by this author" and you will get 184 returns, among which are the following:
Movies http://www.hotmoviez.com -- Simon Gray - Webmaster/Founder of http://www.AboveTopSecret. com E-Mail - s...@abovetopsecret.com Get Paid For Nothing! ... alt.2600.hackerz - Jul 13 2000, 8:10 pm by Above Top Secret - 6 messages - 6 authors
Cheat AllAdvantage If you're interested in getting paid for NOTHING, then check out http://paid4surf.abovetopsecret.com alt.2600.hackerz - Jul 13 2000, 10:53 am by Above Top Secret - 3 messages - 3 authors
Make $100s surfing the net!!! How would you like to earn $100sa month by surfing the internet? A brilliantly simple form of income that requires no effort at all. ... alt.best.of.internet - Apr 1 2000, 7:21 am by Above Top Secret - 1 message - 1 author
Earn $100s surfing the web!!! How would you like to earn $100sa month by surfing the internet? A brilliantly simple form of income that requires no effort at all. ... alt.make.money - Apr 1 2000, 6:27 am by Above Top Secret - 2 messages - 2 authors
Make money surfing the net!!! How would you like to earn $100sa month by surfing the internet? A brilliantly simple form of income that requires no effort at all. ... free.uk.ufo - Mar 31 2000, 9:01 pm by Above Top Secret - 1 message - 1 author
www. Above Top Secret .com - The UK's ultimate website for US ... http://www.AboveTopSecret.com This is the UK's ultimate conspiracy website for those interested in Area 51, secret government projects, aircraft programs ... free.uk.ufo - Mar 23 2000, 3:27 am by Above Top Secret - 1 message - 1 author
www. Above Top Secret .com Check out this website for information about Area 51, UFOs, secret facilities, organisations, government projects, the New World Order, and more. ... alt.paranet.ufo - Mar 21 2000, 3:43 pm by Above Top Secret - 1 message - 1 author
MYSTERIOUS CALIFORNIA TEST FACILITIES McDonnell Douglas "Llano" Facility Lockheed "Hellendale" Facility Northrop "Tejon Ranch" Facility www.abovetopsecret.com/southcal.html alt.alien - Jul 26 1999, 5:07 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
MYSTERIOUS TEST LOCATIONS McDonnell Douglas "Llano" Facility Lockheed "Hellendale" Facility Northrop "Tejon Ranch" Facility www.abovetopsecret.com/southcal.html alt.alien.wanderers - Jul 25 1999, 5:07 pm by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
29 PROTOTYPE STEALTH AIRCRAFT BLACK PROJECTS , SECRET UNDERGROUND DULCE FACILITY , 29 PROTOTYPE STEALTH PLANES , ALIEN/GOVERNMENT COLLABORATION http://www.abovetopsecret.com/lecture.html alt.alien.wanderers - Jul 22 1999, 3:56 pm by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
ET Exposure Law (page now updated) www.abovetopsecret.com/etlaw.html !!! alt.alien.visitors - Jul 9 1999, 5:29 am by Simon Gray - 2 messages - 2 authors
AURORA in detail !!!!! The following website has been updated an incredible amount, including an Aurora page with an amazing amount of detail !!! www.abovetopsecret.com !!! alt.conspiracy.area51 - Jul 8 1999, 9:20 pm by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
GREAT WEBSITE www.abovetopsecret.com !!! alt.magick.sex - Jul 7 1999, 3:05 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
COOL WEBSITE www.abovetopsecret.com , now hugely updated !!! -- Simon Gray - Webmaster www.AboveTopSecret.com alt.alien.visitors - Jul 7 1999, 2:07 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
AREA 51 and RELATED PAGES go to www.abovetopsecret.com alt.conspiracy.black.helicopters - Jun 21 1999, 2:18 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
COOL WEBSITE www.abovetopsecret.com has some cool information which may be of interest !!! alt.fans.chat2 - Jun 16 1999, 11:10 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
COOL WEBSITE www.abovetopsecret.com is a very interesting site. Why not check it out! alt.sport.air-guns - Jun 15 1999, 5:56 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
COOL WEBSITE Great website at www.abovetopsecret.com ! ! ! alt.sport.table-tennis - Jun 15 1999, 1:13 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
COOL WEBSITE www.abovetopsecret.com ! ! ! alt.sport.horse-racing - Jun 15 1999, 12:41 am by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
COOL WEBSITE www.abovetopsecret.com !!! alt.sport.darts - Jun 14 1999, 4:14 pm by Simon Gray - 1 message - 1 author
I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusion about whether or not AboveTopSecret was set up to make money, or to be a "vacuum cleaner" operation. Of course, the two objectives are not mutually exclusive! One thing is certain, this "Simon Gray" was way to busy and energetic to be the playwright. Whoever it was, it looks like he's out to make a million bux one way or the other.
I would also suggest that the reader go to the webarchive and go back over the history of AboveTopSecret.com and notice that it is quite obviously set up to draw in alternative researchers. Why? Obvious answer is to vector ideas. Re-read my post on COINTELPRO.
I'm still amused at the idea that Simon Gray of AboveTopSecret.com - obviously a Brit "specializing" in American conspiracies - being Simon Gray the dramatist. It seems that this is not exactly an isolated case. In recent times the Pentagon's contract with another Brit, for the purposes of spreading disinformation, came to the attention of the mainstream media. Let's look at the strange case of "Christian Bailey.":
So, just who is Christian Bailey?
A 30-year-old Oxford graduate with no public relations experience was the recipient of a $100m (£56m) contract from Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defence for buying space in Iraqi newspapers to place deliberately one-sided stories written by US "psy-ops" troops, at a time when the chaos of Iraq makes genuine journalism all but impossible and when journalists risk their lives on a daily basis to report the truth.
The office building situated at 1420 K Street NW has nothing obvious to commend it other than its prime location. Just a couple of streets from the north-west gates of the White House, it sits in the heart of lobbying land - the K Street corridor that represents one of the most crucial centres of power, influence and money in the United States.
This grey building, neighboured to one side by an off-licence and to the other by a travel agent, is home to the Lincoln Group, a previously little-known "business intelligence" company headed by a heretofore little known young Briton, Christian Bailey, an Oxford graduate and consummate net worker. He is at the centre of a mounting storm of controversy surrounding the Bush administration's covert propaganda war in Iraq.
It was recently revealed that Bailey's company was the recipient of a $100m (£56m) contract from Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defence for buying space in Iraqi newspapers to place deliberately one-sided stories written by US "psy-ops" troops, at a time when the chaos of Iraq makes genuine journalism all but impossible and when journalists risk their lives on a daily basis to report the truth.
As part of the project - in which the US military hid its involvement - Lincoln Group staff paid Iraqi journalists to write similarly misleading stories about US forces and the Iraqi government that ignored anything negative about the occupation. One headline read: "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism."
The revelations have created a furore. President Bush is said to be "very troubled" by the news, while on Capitol Hill members of both the Senate and House armed services committees demanded inquiries. The Pentagon said it would launch an immediate investigation.
Much is unclear about the Lincoln Group, its youthful executive vice-president and his string of previous companies that have left only the faintest paper trail. Indeed, Christian Bailey may not be his real name: a number of student associates said at some point during his four years that he changed his name from Yusefovich - an unlikely surname for someone called Christian.
The Independent has been unable to confirm this. Yet the details known about Bailey and the contract his company won provide a remarkable insight into the way influence and power operate in Washington. Just two years after arriving here, Bailey, 30, who has a penchant for socialising, has apparently developed contacts both within the Republican establishment and the world of private intelligence.
Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said of the false news operation: "I remain gravely concerned about the situation." Since the controversy broke Bailey has kept a low-profile and has offered just the fewest public words about his organisation and what it does. (He failed to respond to requests for an interview.) It also appears a number of internet references linking him to the Republicans can no longer be found.
Yet it is clear the Lincoln Group and its contract with the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, part of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, is inextricably linked with Bailey. He apparently named the company and its various offshoots after Lincoln College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1997 with an MA in economics and management. [abovetopsecret.com was registered in 1997]
Many observers have been surprised Bailey, from Surrey, has been awarded such a sizable contract, give that he appears to have no experience in public relations. Indeed, since he moved to the US in the late 1990s, he has spent much of his time in private finance, working in hedge funds in San Francisco and New York.
It appears he has been especially interested in new technology markets. A brief biography presented by the organisers of a conference held earlier this year in Dubai at which Bailey was listed as a speaker, said he had worked in Palo Alto, California, "where he advised portfolio companies and identified, evaluated and developed emerging technology investments".
The Briton has always enjoyed a reputation for business. Several Oxford associates said it was rumoured that the popular student kept two computers in his room to monitor the stock markets. Bailey has said he founded and sold two companies while an undergraduate. "He was quite enterprising, I believe," said Graham De'ath, of Winchester, who was in the same year.
Kate Smurthwaite, who is now a stand-up comic but shared a flat with Bailey in his third year, told The Independent that the young entrepreneur hired a personal assistant to work for him in his student digs as he ran an operation selling self-help advice on cassettes.
He also had a reputation as a hard-working networker. While in New York he became treasurer of the Oxonian Society, a club for graduates of Oxford and other universities, which invites high-profile figures to speak. He was involved in at least one charity fundraising effort with other hedge-funders. Perhaps of more significance, Bailey became the co-chairman of the New York chapter of Lead21, a networking group for young Republicans. At least a dozen of its members have gone on to work for either the Bush administration, Congress or the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
During a Lead21 trip to the Republican National Convention in New York last autumn, Bailey said of his colleagues to one reporter: "These are going to be the big supporters, the big donors, to the Republican Party in five years."
According to other members, Bailey was very popular. Auren Hoffman, chair of Lead21 and chairman of the Stonebrick Group, a San Francisco-based consulting firm, said Bailey was a good friend. "Christian is a terrific guy personally. Everyone I know that has ever met him instantly likes him. He is very likeable and charming. Very intelligent. Very interesting."
When he moved to Washington, his reputation as a networker continued. He often hosted parties at home and mixed with a set of young, up-and-coming journalists and congressional staffers. He enjoyed a reputation as a good cook, a welcoming host and for making cappuccinos with a machine in his kitchen. He also enjoyed flying: Federal Aviation Administration records show that he is qualified to fly aeroplanes and helicopters.
How and when did Bailey make the switch from hedge funds to private intelligence and PR? One clue is provided by the Alternative Investment News newsletter of 1 March 2003, just weeks before the invasion of Iraq. It reported Bailey's hedge fund, Lincoln Asset Management Group, had launched a buyout fund to start buying companies in the defence and security industries. Bailey said he had obtained commitments of $100m from six institutional investors, whom he declined to name.
Apparently with an eye to the preparations for war being made in the deserts of northern Kuwait, he added: "[The] timing is extremely good to look at defence companies." Shortly afterwards, a subsidiary called Lincoln Alliance Corp was established, offering what it called "tailored intelligence services [for] government clients faced with critical intelligence challenges".
By last autumn Bailey had formed another Lincoln subsidiary, called Iraqex, which seems to have formed a partnership with another American PR firm called Rendon, famous in Washington for having promoted Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress.
At some point Bailey also went into business with Paige Craig, 31, a former US Marine who served in Iraq and elsewhere. [Bailey and Craig are flatmates in a fashionable part of Washington, close to U Street. The flat is just yards away from Café Saint- Ex, popular with young professionals.]
In September, Iraqex won a $6m Pentagon contract to design and execute "an aggressive advertising and PR campaign that will accurately inform the Iraqi people of the Coalition's goals and gain their support". It appears one project was an attempt to persuade the Iraqi and US public that Iraqi troops played a vital role in last year's effort to clear Fallujah.
A strategy document obtained by ABC News revealed the Lincoln Group was seeking to promote the "strength, integrity and reliability of Iraqi forces during the fight for Falujah". In reality, most assessments suggest the small number of Iraqi troops present were minimally involved.
But the real breakthrough came this summer when Bailey's company, having again changed its name to the Lincoln Group, secured a $100m contract for information and psychological operations. Part of the contract was for placing "faux" news stories in some of the 200 Iraqi-owned newspapers that now exist.
Pentagon officials have said that, while not factually incorrect, these stories only presented one side of the story and would not include anything negative about the occupation. It was reported this week that the $10Om was part of a larger $300m "stealth PR effort" in a number of countries around the world.
One PR consultant with experience of the private-intelligence sector, said: "Doctrinally, this is all part of what the military calls information superiority. It is part of the plan for what they call, rather upsettingly, full-spectrum dominance. The truth is that it is just propaganda. And there has always been propaganda in a war. And this is a war, so ... thus runs the thinking."
According to reports from former Lincoln employees, their main task was to take news dispatches, called storyboards, which had been written by specially trained psy-ops troops, have them translated into Arabic and then distribute them to the newspapers. They would also deal directly with members of the Iraqi media through something called the Baghdad Press Club, a group of journalists who were paid to write and publish positive stories. Typically, Lincoln paid newspapers between $40 and $2,000 to run the articles as either news or adverts.
To help it carry out its work, Bailey and Craig - the latter is apparently responsible for most of the Iraq-based end of the business - have reached out to some of the foremost specialists in security and intelligence. Among "advisers" listed on their website is Andrew Garfield, a former British military-intelligence officer and specialist in psychological warfare who has advised the Ministry of Defence. In an e-mail to The Guardian Garfield confirmed his collaboration with Lincoln but gave no details.
Another adviser is Colin Rees Mason, who two years ago received an OBE for his service as a lieutenant-colonel in the Territorial Army, and who for almost 20 years has been a consultant to the Centre for Operational Research and Defence Analysis, a subsidiary of BAE Systems.
The Lincoln Group also has Republican links. Among lobbyists registered to represent it are Charles Black, an adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr and Marlin "Buzz" Hefti, who served as a director at the Pentagon.
Lincoln Group also lists as a partner the Virginia-based private intelligence group WCV3 Security. Last year that company's executive vice-president took unpaid leave to produce Stolen Honour: Wounds That Never Heal, a film that, at a critical time in the presidential election campaign, condemned the Democrat John Kerry and questioned his version of events in Vietnam.
Despite the concern on Capitol Hill about the placing of false stories in foreign media outlets - a practice that dates back to the Cold War - it is unknown what will be the outcome of the Pentagon's investigation. It is also unclear how the controversy has affected the ability of the Lincoln Group or Bailey to fulfil its contract. In a statement the company said: "Lincoln Group has consistently worked with the Iraqi media to promote truthful reporting across Iraq. We counter the lies, intimidation, and pure evil of terror with factual stories that highlight the heroism and sacrifice of the Iraqi people and their struggle for freedom and security."
The London Times had more revelations about "Christian Bailey."
British geek made millions running the Pentagon's propaganda war in Iraq
IT WAS astounding enough for Washington’s political elite: last month they discovered that the man at the heart of a scandal over the planting of US propaganda in Iraqi newspapers was a dapper but unknown 30-year-old Oxford graduate who had somehow managed to land a $100 million Pentagon contract.
What is even more remarkable however, after an investigation by The Times, is that just ten years ago Christian Bailey, whose US company is under investigation for planting fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers, was a nerdy, socially awkward English school-leaver called Jozefowicz.
The transformation of the geeky but ambitious Christian Jozefowicz, who just a few years ago was growing up in a modest terraced house in Godalming, Surrey, to the charming, baby-faced multimillionaire Christian Bailey now rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful figures in Washington — and who next year will probably face questions on Capitol Hill about his company — is one of the more extraordinary stories to have emerged from the Iraq war.
This month it was revealed that Mr Bailey’s US company, the Lincoln Group, was the recipient of a Pentagon contract to help to fight the information war in Iraq. It then emerged that the company was paying Iraqi journalists to plant optimistic news “stories” in Iraqi papers that had been written by the US military.
Interference with the press touches a raw nerve in America. The fake stories revelation provoked a furore among Republicans and Democrats. President Bush said he was “very troubled” by it. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, has promised a Pentagon investigation. Congress plans hearings into the scandal.
The journey from the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, which Mr Bailey left in 1994, to the heart of K Street in Washington, the centre of money and influence in the US capital, has been remarkably rapid. Today he has a reputation in Washington for being a socialite with links to influential Republicans. He is a helicopter and aircraft pilot and his home is in a fashionable area.
Through a Lincoln Group spokesman, Mr Bailey answered questions from The Times to help to explain how, at just 30, he landed the Pentagon as an important client. He was born Christian Martin Jozefowicz on November 28, 1975, in Kingston upon Thames, to Jerzy and Anne Jozefowicz.
His father, a Polish architect, died in April 1998. His mother, who has since reverted to her maiden name of Seifert, was born in West Germany. The family lived in East Molesey, southwest London, before moving to Godalming, Surrey.
Mr Bailey’s Royal Grammar School contemporaries recall a business-obsessed, “geeky” individual with few friends. “He was a nerd at school,” one told The Times. Another described him as a “school joke” who told everyone he was going to be a millionaire. He was the first at school to have a mobile phone and was interested in early versions of the personal computer.
He founded a Young Enterprise company, Chameleon, which led to his selection as one of the top six Young Enterprise participants in Britain.
His school yearbook records Christian Jozefowicz as “Mr Business himself” and that he was elected vice-president of the International Student Forum, a business gathering in the US. In 1994 he won a place at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read economics and management. He kept computers in his room, thought for monitoring the stock markets.
In his third year at Oxford he hired an assistant to help him to run his first proper company, Linck Ltd, which sold self-help tapes. In 1998, he changed his name to Bailey. “Following his father’s death, Bailey assumed the name for family reasons, something which children commonly do,” a Lincoln Group spokesman said.
In the late 1990s he moved to San Francisco to try his hand as a dotcom entrepreneur, and then to New York, where he became treasurer of the Oxonion Society, a club for intellectual Anglophiles. He became co-chairman of a networking group for young Republicans. With his Republican contacts growing, Mr Bailey moved to Washington, where he spotted a golden business opportunity: the looming war in Iraq. He formed a partnership with Paige Craig, a former US Marine who served in Iraq.
In early 2003, just before the invasion, Mr Bailey formed a Lincoln subsidiary, the Lincoln Alliance Corp, offering “tailored intelligence services [for] government clients faced with intelligence challenges”. He also formed another subsidiary, Iraqex, which won a $6 million Pentagon contract to launch “an aggressive advertising and PR campaign that will accurately inform the Iraqi people of the coalition’s goals and gain their support”.
The big breakthrough came in June this year when the Pentagon awarded the Lincoln Group a contract worth up to $100 million over five years to support the US military’s “joint psychological operations”, known as “psyops”.
Lincoln group defended the planting of stories and the company has emphasised that none of them were factually incorrect. “By not speaking through the local media, the coalition would allow a vacuum for rumours and untruths perpetrated by the insurgents’ thuggery and threats,” a spokesman said.
LIFE AND WORK
November 28, 1975: Born Christian Jozefowicz, Kingston upon Thames
1987-94: Attends the fee-paying Royal Grammar School, Guildford
1993-94: Listed on electoral roll as Christian Jozefowicz-Seifert
1994-97: Obtains a 2:1 in economics and management from Lincoln College, Oxford. While at university, runs Linck Ltd.
October 1998: Founds Linck Corporate Finance under the name of Christian Bailey. Fails to declare previous surname or other directorship
1999: Moves to America
2003: Co-founds Lincoln Group, now subject to investigation into planting of US military propaganda in Iraqi newspapers
We consider it a possibility that someone is using the name of the playwright, Simon Gray, to "dramatize" disinformation via the AboveTopSecret.com website and that someone may be "very close" to "Christian Bailey." Looking at all the clues, comparing the dates, we notice that abovetopsecret.com domain was first registered in 1997, on May 18. The site was unused throughout 1997 and 1998. "Christian Bailey's" father died in April 1998. That gave him the freedom to change his name, to launch all kinds of activities that he otherwise might not have been able to do under the watchful gaze of his parent.
Bailey traveled to the U.S. "in the late 90's" and we notice that abovetopsecret.com finally gets an "entry page" in 1999. Later in the year, a very professional looking website suddenly appears sometime between February and October of 1999.
"Simon Gray" was off to a running start...
To finish of this little survey, let's look at one of "Christian Bailey's" co-horts in crime which will show that setting up AboveTopSecret.com as far back as 1997 is entirely in character with the "way things are done."
See: The Man Who Sold the War: John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war
"Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson."
I reckon I'll put my money on Christian Bailey and his gang being the "Simon Gray" behind "AboveTopSecret.com".
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