My Experience with Abovetopsecret.com
This post is a few weeks overdue, but better late than ever! I've been thinking about how to write this, and I've written a long rough draft that I think is entirely too long, so here's a short version! If anyone cares to find out any more details, feel free to ask,
Just a pertinent factoid - I've been a member of abovetopsecret web forum since 2003 or so, before I discovered the Cass material, and so have made hundreds if not thousands of posts on ATS over the years. Skipping to the events that recently unfolded between ATS and Cass group (read about them on Laura's blog), when Joe wrote his "flying fish" article, I saw it, and promptly made a post on ATS with a link to it. It was an entirely neutral post which basically said something like "look, someone has found some serious holes in Catherder's article, I think he makes great points, what do you guys think?". Period!!
This of course unleashed everything BUT a rational discussion of any of those points - why did I even expect anything else? It unleashed all the personal attacks from basic and idiotic to more elaborate and almost convincing! I was accused of being an "agent" working for the SOTT group, and Laura herself was accused of "chain smoking", which was also apparently an activity which makes all her work irrelevant and false from the get go. That one was so weird I actually spent a few minutes trying to make heads or tails of it. I must admit, I'm still trying. If anyone comes up with anything, let me know! I can't help but think that it has something to do with squirrels. Am I off base here? :D
Very soon after I started the thread, the ATS owners/administrators joined in with some "legal" attacks on me and SOTT. Oh yes, SkepticOverLord actually told me, in that very thread, that I owe him money for each and every person who views that thread, because apparently it was all just a big advertisement for Laura's "911 Ultimate Truth" book! So yes, his argument was that Joe's entire article was all empty nonsensical drivel designed to advertise Laura's book (that's actually 2 arguments disguised as one). The only answer I could think of for that was "uh... no?". Anyway, he never followed up on that threat - which only means one thing - it was all bogus and totally would not stand up in court, and so was designed only to intimidate, nothing else. Me being legally-ignorant, I was kinda spooked at first, since for all I knew, I owed him hundreds if not thousands of dollars and he was right! But it didn't take long for me to figure out, with the help of Ark and the SOTT team, that it was just hot air. Yup, knowledge surely protects!
Anyway, just a few weeks ago, I went to ATS and tried to login to my account to see if I have any private messages or any news (people occasionally send me private messages based on some post I made earlier) and to my surprise, my account has been deleted. More than that, every single post I've EVER made on the forum has been totally wiped from the system, as if I never existed. I've seen people be banned before for violating their "terms of service", but to the best of my knowledge, none of their posts have ever been deleted, you just see the phrase "banned member" underneath any of their posts. So what the heck did I do that was SO bad that my existance had to be totally "undone"? I can't think of any "violation" that would warrant a total wipe of the user's entire existance. At most, they could delete one particular post/thread that was the violation itself. But what about the thousand or so perfectly legitimate and long posts and conversations the user had with others on the board on hundreds of topics? Nevermind that this would also mess up all those threads, since now people are seen to be talking and replying to something that's not there, totally confusing any reader who wants to make sense of the thread! Ok so this is obviously not a common thing they do - otherwise their entire forum would be totally messed up and composed of half-conversations that make absolutely no sense. So why was I so special as to warrant such a measure? Not to mention I never really did anything wrong - even if I play the devil's advocate here, since it was in fact Joe and SOTT they had a problem with, all I did was bring their attention to Joe's article! Thousands of people did the exact same thing before me, they found an article that pertains to something discussed on ATS, and they'd make a thread about it and link to it in order to initiate any discussion or debate they wanted. No problems there! Obviously, I must've done something muuuuch worse!
The whole thing was basically something like, Joe writing: 2+2=4! And someone else writing, "uhh that is so just an obvious attempt to advertise your book!". At this point it became irrelevant whether 2+2 actually does equal to 4, and all focus shifts to how evil it is to advertise in such a sneaky and obvious way! Of course, the easiest thing in the world to do to prove that this wasn't an attempt to advertise, is to show that 2+2 REALLY DOES equal to 4 - and so the stated objective of Joe's article is proven BY Joe's article itself! In other words, everything Joe said in his article was in fact, true, as all he did was point out a bunch of assumptions on the part of CatHerder, and a bunch of clever emotional manipulation techniques. And Joe proves it by citing examples directly from CatHerder's article, which speak for themselves! Admittedly they were not easy to spot just by reading the article due to the way it was written (lots of technical mumbo jumbo and emotional hooks etc), but once spotted and pointed out as Joe did, there was no longer even a question! When someone points to a picture, and claims that an object in the picture proves his point - but that object is actually NOT in the picture at all, and no one who looks at the picture can see it or anything that even remotely resembles it, what is that called? Catherder basically snuck a lot of 2+2=5 inside a bunch of other long formulas, and Joe just found those 2+2=5 statements and pointed them out. That's IT! They were hard to spot because they were buried in a bunch of other crap, but they were still there and clear as day when looked at directly!
Whether Joe had an alterior motive is also a question that certainly deserves discussion, it is as good a question as any - but that's not what the intention was by those who brought that question up! The intention was to direct all attention away from Joe's actual point, that 2+2=4, and that CatHerder said 2+2=5 about 20 times or so. It doesn't matter how the attention was diverted, just to divert it. So of course, the idea that Joe was just making an advertisement and I was "publishing it" for him was only ONE of the many diversionary accusations used, all of which could easily be proven false with just one iota of reason or logic. Not parareason or paralogic though!
So that's my story and my involvement in this affair. I could say that it all started because of me, but then again, it was only a matter of time before someone else found Joe's article and brought it to the attention of ATS admins. However, if that happened, it is entirely possible that ATS admins would not risk making any of this public, and instead simply try to attack SOTT quietly. Of course, SOTT would probably have made this matter public on its own website as they did anyway, but the ATS community would likely be totally unaware of this entire fiasco. So perhaps my role in this was to bring this to the attention of ATS members, and I can only hope that some of them learned from this and were able to SEE not only what Joe was saying in his catfish article (not that it took much brainpower to see it after Joe had so clearly explicated everything, as he did all the brainy work for us!), but also what was happening between ATS and SOTT, how, and why.
ATS has already been on the radar of pretty much everyone who is anyone in the "control system', if not before the Pentagon flash, then certainly since! But perhaps what I did was indeed unthoughtful and wasteful, and perhaps detrimental in the end? I am well aware that good intentions without knowledge, pave the way to hell. Had I know that this thread would create all that has transpired, I would've definitely thought twice before making it, and even then, I'd discuss it with SOTT first. So my casual treatment of the subject matter and casual creation of that thread is due to my ignorance of the significance of Joe's article, and in turn, the significance of the Pentagon crash, which seems indeed to be the one weak link in 911. And by "significance" I just mean significance to those who wish to stifle it - I did understand the significance to the truth seekers, I just neglected to keep in mind its significance to everyone else as well. So yeah, I was very shocked as to just how serious my thread was and just how much effort went into distracting/attacking. But in another sense, I'm grateful for that shock, I'm grateful for the lessons that were inherent in this fiasco, and so I am both, guilty, and happy about the whole event, on different levels.
All comments/thoughts welcome.
P.S. - I forgot to add, my user name on ATS was lilblam.
