My Experience with Abovetopsecret.com
Chris said:
If you have read at least a part of the C's transcript, you will see that they refuse (at least I don't remember them do that) to answer general questions that ask if whatever event was good or detrimental in a general sense because it depends on the point of view of the individual and his prejudices.
Well that is true, but then what is detrimental to a truth seeker? I guess the most "detrimental" part would be himself, his entropic nature. But if he can overcome the inner battle, then the worse it gets externally, the more opportunity to learn and become stronger and wiser for it - as long as he does not succumb and fall to external pressure that is, but that would be his internal fault, since he had to choose to succumb. So it seems that pretty much everything that happens to one seeking truth can be seen as "positive" if the seeker utilizes it correctly and learns from it. Attacks can slow things down temporarily, but in the end, what does not kill you, makes you stronger, right? All there is is lessons, osit.
My only concern was that this might be financially detrimental to SOTT due to the "legal threats" that the ATS owners are making. But as long as SOTT does nothing illegal, I don't think they should have much to worry about in that regard, but I may be wrong.
Finally, I didn't try to find your original post on the subject since you said it was deleted, but maybe you can reflect on the way you presented your ideas and the media you chose (the author's board), which can affect a lot, how the message is received on the other end, especially when you contradict the owner of the board...
I did not try to defend anyone's side - I simply tried to use logic, reason, and evidence that *I* saw was there regarding CatHerder's article, Joe's article that was based on that, and the Pentagon strike issue in general. If Joe happened to be on the same side as I was, it was simply because he saw the same things, not because I am sticking up for Joe just for the sake of picking a side and sticking to it. However, I did not get into arguments, I was very neutral and simply pointed things out that I saw. And it was very clear that they had no evidence to argue against this, nor could they use any logic (except maybe a paralogic of sorts), since it was very clear what the answer was. So the only thing they had left is to distract from the main point and start on the same-old-same-old types of attacks against Laura, SOTT, myself, etc. Instantly you had people (curiously enough) getting "Maynerd Most's" articles about the evilness of Laura and her evil cult, and using that as evidence that the entire SOTT is crazy and evil, etc. Nevermind that most of what "Maynerd" says is easily proven wrong by reading Laura's work, and that which is not, has absolutely NO evidence to support it, not one bit. But either way, it was, as much other nonsense was as well, used as evidence that Laura, myself, the SOTT, were a bunch of insane crooks full of nonsensical gibberish, nothing more.
Anyway, it became so bad that I had to stop posting - it was pointless and a total waste of energy. It was a chaotic mess of attacks from every direction imaginable, and the original intention of the thread was so far gone that it was hopeless to ever even think that the conversation will ever return to the initial point - CatHerder's article and the points Joe made about it. In fact, the crazy part is - the very first reply to my thread was something along the lines of "I hope someone can find a way to destroy that website" (referring to SOTT I guess). I just kept staring at that post, it was so shocking to read that, I just kept trying to make sense of it, as in, why!? The poster did not provide any details, just that he wanted either the website or the article "destroyed".
The subject line of my thread (after SkepticOverlord, in true psychopathic nature, changed it from the original) was "CatHearder's analysis under critical scrutiny". I am looking for it now, and it looks like it was deleted - it's in the trashbin and unavailable to be viewed by anyone. Here's the link to it:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread189339/pg1
Read Laura's blog if you wonder why Skeptic changed the subject line. Specifically this post: http://laura-knight-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2006/01/abovetopsecretcom-cointelpro-update-2.html
If I was to contradict some ideas that Laura or Ark introduced, on this board, I would certainly use a lot, lot of care, be sure that what I bring is well documented, even if I think that they are a lot more open minded than others, because, if I'm wrong, I may cause prejudice to them.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "cause prejudice to them"? I think you can contradict anything as long as you have evidence to back yourself up. If you start proclaiming stuff with no evidence, then it just amounts to noise and wastes everyone's time and energy. It would be no different than just making something up.
On the other end, I don't think it is good to stamp a site cointelpro because they broadcasts sometimes info that comes or may come from cointelpro. The point is to try to discover if they did it deliberately or by mistake because of a lack of knowledge, effort to verify it's degree of thruth, etc.
I agree that it's important to know this, but if a website is consistently doing it, then does it really matter if it's intentional or due to personal bias/ignorance? The effect is the same! Take ATS for example, it was created and is maintained for the purposes of cointelpro. Even if the owners themselves were just naive puppets, it still doesn't change the fact that the website is cointelpro since it acts as such (for the record though, there is much evidence to suggest that the owners are consciously in on it, but that's a different topic).
Many people excuse America's slaughter of the innocents in Iraq as "accidental" and so justified. In other words, the terrorists are evil because they TARGET civilians, but Americans are good because their INTENTIONS are to not target civilians, they just kill them accidentally! Aside from the fact that this is also simply untrue, and just for the sake of argument entertaining the idea that America only kills civilians by accident, it still doesn't change the fact that America killed more innocent people in Iraq than all "Terrorists" in the world combined. So whether they do it intentionally or not is important in and of itself, but it in no way detracts from the fact that the killing did happen, and so accidentally or not, America is a mass murderer of innocents. So in that same way, whether a website is intentionally cointelpro or not is important to know in and of itself for various reasons, but as long as a website acts as cointelpro, then the effect is the same whether it does so intentionally or not, osit.
Maybe the only difference is that, those who do it accidentally have hope - there is a chance that if you bring this up to them in a reasonable/logical manner and back yourself up with evidence, they may realise what they've been doing and stop. If it's intentional, then all such efforts are obviously a waste of energy. So for the sake of conservation of energy, I think it's very important to know. But even if the website is unintentionally cointelpro, there is usually a good reason for it - it's a bias/assumption/belief held by the owner. So the stronger the sacred cow, the less chance that logic/reason/evidence will ever do anything for him either. But at least he has some sort of chance, which is better than none :)
What is more important is to look for the motives of the individuals, if they do an open minded research for thruth.
But if the motives are there but the effort/critical-mindedness is not, then it's just as hopeless! Most people who go to Church have good motives - their intention is not to deceive themselves and others, not at all. They think it's the truth and they just want to help others by spreading it! So I'd say that for this work it is equally important to both have the intention AND an open/critical mind. If your mind isn't open or critical, you're a good-intentioned fool that will deceive himself and by extention everyone else! If your intentions are STS, then your open and critical mind will be used for those purposes, and so you'd be intentionally deceiving everybody. The former (good-intentioned fools) are always the puppets of the latter (STS-intentioned people with brains). And when you're a hand of the STS system, whether a conscious hand or not, you still do the same stuff - what the STS system wants you to do, osit.
At least that's my understanding of it, more or less!