My Respect for Kevin Barrett Just Plunged Upward
(Yes, I know it is very questionable to use 'upward' with 'plunged' -- it's a little 'Downside Up' reference.)
This term is the first time in my prolonged studenthood that I have actually studied rhetoric (it's my last indulgence in English Lit before I become a full-time Applied Linguistics geek.) I've been turning over a few 9/11-movement related thoughts -- principally centered on the ethos-logos-pathos paradigm, and the fact that pathos (the appeal to emotions and emotional intelligence as a crucial form of persuasion, not just a nicey-nicety) is under-represented in most of 9/11 Truth, other than in the form of deference to the 'family members.' Also, there is at least one person I've been encountering recently who is all about logos -- he's exclusively focuses on LOGIC and tends to stamp his tiny foot when he thinks someone in the Truth movement is being ILLOGICAL.
In this comment over at the Blogger, Kevin Barrett makes an excellent case for limiting conflict over 'peripheral evidentiary issues' in response to Victronix, Arabesque, and Jules (one of the Truthmove guys.) His views of successful 9/11 Truth movement rhetoric here are compelling.
All pro-truth voices with something interesting to say are welcome to come on [the radio show], and I give guests plenty of space to express themselves, as a cursory listen will demonstrate: http://www.mujca.com/airwaves.htm
Ad hominem means attacking the messenger, not the message. A negative comment directed toward the blogger, rather than toward the specific content of a particular blog entry, is an ad hominem attack.
I don't like to spend much time in internet flame wars for several reasons:
*They tend to become shrill, angry, defensive exchanges that escalate into shouting matches. Why? Maybe because deprived of the warmth and expressiveness conveyed by actual voices, people lose sight of the humanity of their dialogue partner. I've noticed that at 9/11 conventions where people actually meet face to face, folks who had hated and suspected each other, and wasted enormous time and energy on internet flame wars and mutual accusations, quickly recognized each others' humanity and moved into constructive-dialogue mode. The time that they had spent attacking each other on the internet then becomes available for doing public actions, distributing DVDs, talking to their 9/11-newbie neighbors, lecturing, writing books and articles and op-eds and letters to the editor, making and distributing their own films and music and bumperstickers, lobbying their congressional representatives, doing freeway blogging, creating 9/11 truth shows on public access TV, hosting or calling in to radio shows, and so on. I have invested and continue to invest enormous amounts of time and energy in every one of those activities, and have very little left over for interminable, ever-escalating arguments on the internet. (If there were actually any disinformation agents out there--I'm agnostic about this possiblity--their top priority would be to get truthers wasting each others' time in internet flame wars.)
*I am obliged to stare and the %#@ computer screen, simply to keep up with obligations, to the point that my health is diminished. I get hellish migraines from too much screen time, and suffer from repetitive motion syndrome in my right hand from too much typing. I get hundreds of emails a day, many of which I have to respond to, along with other necessary and constructive internet work. That leaves me little time for optional, non-constructive internet activities, such as finding faults with other truthers and picking fights with them.
* Most of the topics that start flame wars strike me as likely to generate more heat than light. The squabbles over peripheral evidentiary issues are trivial, because we already have more than enough evidence that we, and any reasonable person, will agree with. Evidence is no longer the issue--the evidence is in. Critical thinkers will find it. Non-critical-thinkers or pre-critical-thinkers (the majority, unfortunately) are not swayed by evidence anyway--to them, and even to newbies who ARE critical thinkers, controlled demolition is actually far more outrageous and crazy than no-planes.
Since our goal is to reach the not-yet-converted, we ought to do some surveys to find out how people's interest was stimulated in 9/11 truth. Personally, I came on board thanks to Griffin's lucid arguments in The New Pearl Harbor, because I'm an academic and a book person. But the vast majority of the truthers I've met have said their interest was stimulated by either the first or second versions of Loose Change, In Plane Site, 9/11 Mysteries, or (more recently) Zeitgeist. (Remember, Loose Change took off thanks to its rhetorically brilliant but factually shakier first version.) What do these films have in common? Scrupulous facts & zero speculation? No, what they have in common is that they are compelling, well-made FILMS. They are far more rhetorically effective than any "talking head" film and this rhetorical effectiveness has relatively little to do with their position on evidentiary issues.
That means that Jim Hoffman (a good scientist who seems to have a rather modest Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) and who apparently has not studied how human communications work in the real world, which is what I have been studying from various disciplinary perspectives for 20 years) may be right in most of his evaluations of the evidence, but he is wrong in his simplistic, one dimensional "poison pill" theory. According to that theory, a DVD presenting 90% solid evidence and 10% weak evidence or speculation would be rhetorically ineffective, because the bad 10% would poison the good 90%. That's a nice theory, very appealing to scientific and/or anal types who think there's one right answer to every question. But it doesn't describe the real world. If you study rhetoric, the science of persuasion, you'll find that emotional, not intellectual factors are the key. The revolution in mind-control launched by Edward Bernays and described in the Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self, Doug Rushkoff's book Coercion, and other sources relies on this discovery.
We can judge the effectiveness of a 9/11 truth DVD (or lecture, radio program, and to a lesser extent book or article) by its ability to address the emotional issues that keep most people blinded to the all-too-obvious 9/11 facts. The first version of Loose Change was probably the most rhetorically effective 9/11 DVD ever, with In Plane Site and 9/11 Mysteries tied for second, because these films reached their audiences at an emotional level, thanks to their rhythmic editing, compelling narration, music, gripping images, and so on. They provide a kind of shock effect that's analogous to the one Rushkoff describes as the key to coercive communication. Does that mean that these films are coercive propaganda? No! The shock effect CAN be used to regress the target to infantile dependency--that's what was done to us on 9/11. But at a more general level, this kind of shock effect is what's necessary to shake us free from our world-view so that a new world-view becomes possible. On 9/11, the authorities shocked us and then stepped in as our parent figures to coerce us into a worldview they'd designed for us. Rhetorically effective 9/11 truth communication likewise shocks us, but does not regress or control us. It shakes us free from our preconceptions and raises questions that cause us to take a second look at matters we had thought were resolved. All of that is accomplished more by the emotional quality of the communication than by the facts it cites.
Once we understand how communication works, the debates over peripheral evidentiary issues become less important, and we can stop wasting time on them and return to more productive activities. Let's take the extreme example: Raising questions about the authenticity of the Tower-hit videos. If the above theory of communication is correct, those who raise these questions may be helping the cause of 9/11 truth, even if they are completely and obviously wrong. Simply asking people to entertain the possibility that the corporate media is THAT controlled exerts a shock effect that tends to provoke curiosity and interest--which will soon lead to the discovery that the corporate media IS utterly and completely controlled and complicit in the 9/11 big lie, even if these particular videos are easily proven authentic. (For those who don't yet understand the extent of pre-scripted media complicity in enormous crimes, please check out Evidence of Revision Part 1, and watch the archival footage of the minutes before JFK's talk in Ft. Worth just prior to the assassination. You'll hear the announcer go on and on about how JFK is likely to be killed by a lone assassin, because it's always a lone assassin, etc. etc.--an obvious subliminal prep-talk to the American people, delivered just minutes before JFK's brains were blown out).
Given all of this, I think that Jim Hoffman (a good scientist whose work I have always supported and linked at mujca.com) and his sidekick Victoria Ashley a.k.a Victronix (who I hope spends as much time on productive activities as she does picking fights with truthers) have had an overall negative effect on the 9/11 truth movement. They have gone out of their way to attack all of the most rhetorically effective DVDs and many of the most rhetorically effective writers and speakers, stirring up enormous dissension and bad feelings, damaging the congeniality that is so necessary to an effective movement, and wasting immense amounts of time that truthers would otherwise be spending on productive activism. I invite both of you, Jim and Victronix, to reconsider your approach. I would be happy to talk with either or both of you, on or off the radio, to find out more about our areas of agreement and disagreement and resolve any outstanding emotional issues. Please email me so we can set up a time for a radio show or private phone call.
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I've been pushing the
I've been pushing the peripheral route for persuasion for almost over a year now. I'm not on here as much as I was on 911blogger. But that's because I've tried to get my act together to focus on school more (and becoming a Board Certified Behavior Analyst). If the peripheral route is to be used then the health and suffering of the heroes of 9/11 should be the emotional focus. I'm assuming my posts are still up at the 9/11-compromised-blogger regarding just this topic. This is an area I have experience in and where I feel I can make the biggest contribution to the movement.
The central route of persuasion is all we would hope to need to use but people rely on both logic and emotions. Any one trained in psychology KNOWS that. The peripheral route is more effective on a wider portion of the population (they make decisions based off of emotions.).
As I proposed before, a list should be set up with peripheral arguments related to the health of the workers with citations and actual names of those dead and dying and suffering. Using these emotional arguments will get our foot in the door for stronger emotional arguments that should include the disparaging and arrogant comments by leaders towards the "masses". These comments should help focus the attention on the globalists.
Any one interested in this stuff should read up on the psychometric test "Need for Cognition". High scorers on this are swayed by central routes of persuasion. Low scorers are swayed by the peripheral route. Pass it on to Jim. I'm sure he'd respect these empirical findings once exposed to studies on this topic.
I met Jim Hoffman once in Grass Valley, Ca and he struck me as being genuine. I wouldn't expect someone trained in his area of expertise to understand why emotional arguments are good for getting our foot in the door.
-Whitey
Very interesting.
I found a free online assessment of 'need for cognition' at http://www.yourmorals.org/explore.php (they do make you register.)
I scored a bit lower than the average liberal and a tad higher than the average conservative.
nice blog
Hi there,
I have done a bit of digging in the psychology-of-persuasion literature; it looks like any attitude that is formed under emotionally intense conditions requires an emotionally persuasive appeal to change. If the attitude were formed under dry, logical, rational conditions, than that same approach would work to turn people around. This is, I believe, the single biggest obstacle to getting 9/11 truth out. I've been in quite a few arguments with people about 9/11, and getting bogged down in the details (steel melting point, etc.) are lost.
I'm actually using the NFC scale in my research, too, to pinpoint who is more likely to be persuaded. I'd like a good film clip -- maybe 10 minutes long -- to use in the conditions in which I want an emotional appeal. I'm not sure (it's possible) that written communication (as in a survey) will be powerful enough, or I'm not sure how to write it as such.
Man, I remember in the days, weeks, and months following 9/11, how I pored over the NYTimes for those stories of the dead memorialized (back when I used to read the Times). It took forever to get through all the victims, and all the stories were heartbreaking. The imagery of the buildings exploding was of course extremely emotional. The idea of using planes as missiles - the hijackings - the people supposedly getting sliced by box cutters - the planes crashing, etc. All very emotional - and that's what we're up against.
E
Good points.
Thanks for commenting.
I've been looking at the NCS
I've been looking at the NCS and conditioning and emotions for a thesis project. They picked the towers for a reason. I think the emotions play a big role in mediating situations where the NCS applies. "Need for cognition refers to an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors." If it's scary it's certainly not going to be enjoyable. I guess that says a lot about the people who are willing to look at the evidence.
-Whitey
(I'm being lazy about logging in sorry.)
I guess that says a lot
I guess that says a lot about the people who are willing to look at the evidence.
I guess the people who are willing to look at the evidence are either not scared by it, or enjoy looking at scary evidence, or at least are willing to face their fears and look at the evidence anyway.
...says a lot about the people who are willing..."
to look at the scary evidence and find it enjoyable. true.
fascinating stuff.
i think it's a matter of "maturity". emotional and intellectual development/evolution.
that's how so many have been manipulated into the official myth.  like children. children who have not yet arrived at the point where they can see the evidence that, let's say,  perhaps their parents are screwed up, deal with it emotionally and intellectually, and move on from there.  like children who never pass through the state of adolescent questioning of norms, status quo, authority, parents, teachers, leaders, one's faith, dogma, government, history...
we're dealing with a lot of immature adults!Â
hope we make it through this, brave ones. pregnant times.
Bingo! That's what I've been
Bingo! That's what I've been saying for years. I pisses me off too because my folks are some of them =(. I think the education system and the lack of time parents have with their children is DIRECTLY linked to this immaturity. It's due to social engineering. The bankers slowly depreciated the dollar, both parents have to work now, less time for kids at home. It's amazing how the value of our currency effects the quality of our life and that by depreciating the Federal Reserve Note gradually, slowly since 1913 people haven't noticed their standard of living dropping. It's a HUGE longitudinal example of behavioral conditioning. It's just mind boggling.
Speaking of mind boggling, I just started this book called "Pawns in the Game". It's about the Illuminati and world politics. I'd recommend it so far.
-Whitey
It's a site that offers a lot of free assessments
and frames the results in terms of liberal/conservative differences. I think the test is the original one -- it's 18 questions and there is no political dimension to it, it's just that your results are framed that way.
I went there but I have to
I went there but I have to register just to see the questions. I'm curious if they used the actual 'need for cognition' test with 18 questions by petty & caccioppo or something else. The need for cognition test I'm thinking of has no political ratings.
-Whitey
Also enlightening
is the response to this post at 911b as well as at their own private clubhouse by the 'usual suspects' who just DO NOT GET IT.
This is the most sense Kevin Barrett has ever made, from my perspective.
that evidence of revision film he cites is wingtv
and it is, well, weird. and i think misleading. somebody somewhere is havin'a laugh!
that was me...
I'd be curious to know why he felt this was a good thing to link to. Not just because it's WingTV (over the top christian rightesque) but because it seems so fake for some reason. I was watching it and couldn't help but wonder if I wasn't witnessing real life video fakery (genuine faux, so to speak). It got so bad I even started wondering if the JFK assassination wasn't just that too. By creating a controversy about WHO really shot JFK the question that will, it is hoped, not be asked is IF JFK was really shot. Would it have been that hard to fake? From the success that we've seen a fake as sloppy as 9/11â„¢ have, I hope the world will forgive me for suddenly being more open to the 9/11â„¢ fraud being just the latest in a series of grand hoaxes throughout history. Why else would people like Zelikow study "public myths"? Because they really care what people think about alligators in the city sewers? Something tells me the stakes are a bit higher, and that 9/11â„¢ has blown up in the face of whoever's bright idea it was, and by extension in that of everyone who helped perpetuate the myth, willfully or through ignorance.
clarification sought (and long tirade to follow)
Just loosely following your line of thinking for a moment -- why would anyone go to the trouble of faking JFK's death? If he was considered an enemy, they'd want to take him out, right? Where's your logic?
Lots of 911 was faked, so I'm not sure what you mean by a complete fake. The buildings actually blew up, didn't they?
Incidentally, I am inclined to think that the Appollo mission was faked in a studio. Too many questions are unaswered or the answers fit this alternate hypothesis. (The Van Allen radiation belts make the whole trip laughable, without including all the other stuff.) If this observation gets me kicked off WTCB, so be it.
Do you know that there is serious question about the idea that AIDS is caused by HIV? HIV is a harmless retrovirus that has never been demonstrated (using Koch's postulates) to cause AIDS. Fascinating book on the subject by a brilliant virologist, Peter Duesberg. But, hey, you'd have to be brave enough to put those emotions down for a few hours to get a grasp of the whole stinking mess. (Bk: Inventing the aids virus)
And what about the notion that saturated fat in the diet causes heart disease? Bullshit. There's plenty of research out there showing that eating carbs (mainly refined sugar, flour, rice, etc.) leads to metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's, arthritis). Even brushing your teeth doesn't allay tooth decay if you eat too many carbs, and why indigenous peoples eating their native diets suffer none of these ills (and have great teeth and bone structure, with no need for orthodontia). What's keeping us from this info? The sugar and processed-food industry. (Bk: good calories, bad calories, by Gary Taubes)
Let's see - what else is fake? That we are legally required to pay taxes. The 16th amendment was never ratified. The bill to allow the Federal Reserve to print our money was passed under susicious circumstances, too, though I cannot recall what they are.
Hmmm, what else? What's that shit in vaccines - thimerosal - and does it cause autism? Huge cover up there, too. (Bk: Evidence of Harm, by David Kirby)
And? The big time: Just about every war we've been in up to and including WWI was for fake reasons. (Can YOU list them all?)
Wars we don't even know about in South America...
Remember the declared "war" on drugs? CIA and others made it worse. They are drug-running to finance things like Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton was picked to follow Bush Sr. because he had as much to lose by revealing what was happening as Bush Sr. did. Complete psychopaths running our country . . . how could it not lead to 9/11.
And what of the others murdered? MLK, John Lennon, Marilyn, RFK; more recently, Senators Wellstone & Carnahan, and potential NY Senator, JFK Jr? The investigators of the Oklahoma City bombing? Hell, the bombing itself was a false-flag. That British dude, Kelley (and others) who questioned the wisdom of going into Iraq were "suicided." Lots of others I'm too ignorant to know about.
And, ah yes, the "Holocaust" -- definitely looks like no evidence of gassing, just typhus, dysentary, malnutrition -- horrific consequences of internment in wartime. Auschwitz museum lowered their estimate of the number killed there from 4 million down to 1.5 (is that right?). Yet people still talk about the "6 million dead." No forensic evidence, nothing but tortured eyewitnesses at Nuremburg. Nothing.
Here's another myth: That Israel wants peace. They want land. And oil. And power. And all the Palestinians to die a slow and painful death, women, children, old people included. And until we can get Americans to see this ... well, frankly, Israel's behavior is pretty darn dangerous in the long run, to even Israel's survival. Whatever mad-men are at the controls are definitely not thinking long term. They are thinking as if none of us will have a long-term memory to challenge them later...or may be that we will not survive long enough to do so.
Face it, folks, we are fucking expendable.
Oh, and you know, our media (news) is largely fake. Our elections are now fake.
Did I miss something???
It's not so weird, given all these "fakes" that people are behaving as if in a trance regarding 9/11. They are perhaps conditioned to think uncritically. Maybe that's also because most of us have a "fake education" - just sit here, take your ritalin, listen to lecture, and regurgitate the "facts" as I tell them you to. Maybe the formula is "make the event emotional enough and that will turn off people's critical faculties." Part of the mix is also public shaming of dissident voices.
Peter Duesberg (the AIDS dissident) has received professional ostracism for daring to speak out. No way to do research without funding from NIH/HSF; no way to publish in journals without peer review. Peer review usually keeps crap out of the journals but it can just as easily silence unpopular but true voices. People's careers and welfare depend on supporting that myth (of AIDS) into the ground. There will always be funding to find an "AIDS vaccine," but that's because they will never discover a vaccine for a virus whose only detectable material IS antibodies (what the HIV test does -- detects antibodies). Same for cancer -- if there is never a cure, then you can always get funding to "fight for the cure." Drug companies want chronic diseases, by gum, not diseases that their drugs can cure. Take these pills every day for life and keep paying your premiums, buddy.
Sorry for the rant. But I need someone to talk to in the middle of the night about these things, and you left yourself wide open, Gretavo, with that talk about JFK's slaughter and 911 being fake.
I have figured this shit out just since the fifth anniversary of 911, and most in the last 6 months. This is a mind-fuck. Is there anyone out there who sees a pattern??? Do you think I'm a nut? I wish I were.
E
p.s. forgot religion -- biggest fake of all. Zero evidence that jesus christ ever lived, let alone is devine. Handy myth though.
i start with "could it happen"
why it would be done is a different question. if it could have been faked, and as I said i think 9/11 disabused many of us of our notions of the proper bounds of our skepticism, then it might have been faked.
to think that the potential for this sort of mischief had not been forseen by a great many people when televisions began finding their way into every American's home is absurd, of course this was understood and taken advantage of.
how much is real? how much is theater put on by some interest group or other?
Those steeped in the cultural offerings of the infotainment society are particularly ill-suited to distinguish the two. As well as those who are just gullible in general even without the infotainment treatment.
I don't buy it
The theory that the JFK assassination was faked seems exceedingly absurd at face value. You'd have to explain why they would go through the trouble of making it look like he was shot from the front with a large exit wound in the back, which exposed for the entire world that they lied and covered up how he was shot. Then you'd have to explain the body being stolen and the bullet wound on the forehead modified to hide the fact that it was an entry would, etc, etc. Then you'd have to explain how all the witnesses in Delay plaza were in on the hoax, and on and on.
Fantastic claims require fantastic evidence. To theorize that the JFK assassination was faked is a fantastic claim, with zero evidence to support it. I would even go so far as to say that it is on par with the theory of no planes on 9 /11, if you ask me.
[this was Keenan, forgot to log in]
brain exercise
Hey I'm not saying I think there's a good case to be made, just inviting people to conduct the exercise in free thinking. I think it's interesting that you raise problems similar to what is raised by defenders of the 9/11 OCT. Why, for example, would everyone in Dealey Plaza have to be in on it? For all they know the president drove by, a few shots rang out, and later they heard he was dead. This is the problem with the Bhutto assassination--no one actually saw her be killed, and it turns out (we are told) that she was neither shot nor a victim of the alleged suicide bomber's blast. Also, no autopsy was allowed by her husband. Hmmm. Now with JFK obviously faking it would have been much much harder, and I agree it probably wasn't faked. But I think it's a worthwhile exercise anyway!
Passing Gas and Passing Judgement
"E-Vero", you wrote:
I value the political integrity of this website too much (primarily
because of Casseia's participation here) to leave this little part of
your Comment unanswered.
We need to be able to support Resistance to Zionism by all means
necessary, including the use of criticism as a form of weapon and the
use weaponry as a form of criticism.
But we have no right to stab our own eyes out; no right to remove the
moral and righteous elements from our own ranks and to disarm our
people by spewing out lies and nonsense.
Listing the Holocaust as a hoax and claiming that the mass gassings at
the Death Camps are a lie is unethical, wrong, harmful to the cause,
unprincipled and outright injurious PRIMARILY to the victims of Zionism.
Please review your stance. Please rethink it. Please re-articulate.
And I would ask the moderators here to monitor this person's writings.
The good work being done by several regular contributors at this
website who critique, explore and oppose the genocidal and immoral
policies of Zionism will be neutralized and harmed if a Holocaust
revisionist becomes comfortably associated with those views.
Thanks,
Petros
petros@cyprus-org.net
http://petros-evdokas.cyprus-org.net/Another-sort-of-Introduction.html
There are no 'sacred cows' here, Petros.
(At least I hope not.)
We may not all agree on any number of history's controversies here but we (I haven't heard Cass's opinion on this so she's not included in my 'we' brush.) do agree that there are major problems with the 'holocaustâ„¢' myth. One of the major problems being there is absolutely no evidence of mass gassings at any of the alleged death camps.
History's being revised everyday, why is it the 'holocaustâ„¢' seems to be the one sacred myth people are afraid to look at objectively?
Gas and "Judgment"! revision is different than denial
much about the holocaust as embedded in our brains pre 80's has now been revised by even jewish historians, i believe. (read:  Lazlo Toth)  revisionism is healthy...
take Howard Zinn for instance.
hi Petros--on revisionism
We are all 9/11 "revisionists" here, and as such we can't be hypocrites and say that one "sacred" historical event (or non event as the case may be!) is fair game and others are verboten. While there is certainly little to be gained politically from linking 9/11 skepticism with holocaust skepticism, this is not a political site.
Personally, I found the work of Jewish revisionist David Cole to be solid and find the fact that he "recanted" after being threatened by the Jewish Defense League (a terrorist group) highly suspicious. I do not endorse or support the views of people like David Duke, but someone like David Cole has a right to conduct research and share his views without being intimidated or threatened. Because he was successfully silenced personally, I want to make sure that his views are well publicized, since they show that the holocaust is not a "Jewish litmus test".
This is also not to say that the Nazis were noble and angelic--far from it--they very much resembled Zionists actually, with their insistence on a racially pure homeland and the willingness to forcibly remove people (which in the case of deported Jews was a policy very much supported by Zionists at the time. The mass deportation of Jews from Germany and parts of Europe was in my view a crime, as it is today when the Zionists do it to the Palestinians. This real suffering is cheapened by the insistence on making unsubstantiated claims about a mass extermination program.
I myself didn't realize until I dared to read a few forbidden books that in fact nowhere did the Nazis ever claim to plan to exterminate Jews. The final solution referred to kicking them out of Europe, not exterminating them. The alleged gas chambers have proven to be totally inconsistent with their alleged use, not showing for example the tell tale blue stains of Hydrogen Cyanide, brand name Zyklon B, the premium pest control chemical in Europe at the time. The alleged homicidal gas itself was used, and no one disputes this, as the primary form of controlling lice that spread typhus.
Allegations of mass gassings came during and after the war but were really just regular old war atrocity propaganda of the kind that was also used against Germany in the first world war (even then there was talk of 6 million Jews perishing from the hardship of the war--the number seems to have some smbolic significance, since it is generally cited as the number killed in WW2 even after the death count at Auschwitz was revised by mainstream authorities from 4 million to 1 million. The problem for the allies was that they had committed as many if not more war crimes as the Nazis (firebombing of Dresden, atomic bombing of Japan) but as the victors they had to convict the Germans of doing something "even worse". Eyewitnesses concocted a number of impossible scenarios that were supported by "interrogations" (the allies would never have tortured anyone of course) of Nazi leaders during Nuremberg and beyond.
So yes, it may come as a shock to people and they may accuse me and others of being neo-Nazis (which I at least am not in any way) but as someone just said, we have no sacred cows. If anyone can explain away the inconsistencies in the official holocaust narrative I would welcome their efforts--but that would be impossible if we do not allow discussion of both sides in a fair and balanced manner!
link needed
Casseia:
Is there any possibility of providing a link to Kevin's comment? Or at least tell me which blog he commented on? I hate to wade through all the stuff at 9llb because 1) it is a drain on my time, and 2) I don't like 911b since they started kicking people out. If you're too busy (w/ 200 emails a day!), I understand.
E
Here's the link, E.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/13704
Looks like the whole truefaction gang's piled on Barret.
Thanks, Big_D! E
Thanks, Big_D!
E
To clarify
That whole entry other than my italicized remarks at the beginning, is Kevin's comment. Thank god I don't get 200 emails a day.
oops
Oh...that's very different. (to quote Emily Litella, who was on the same show as father guido sarducci...)
E
p.s. i'm glad you don't get 200 emails a day, too!
Wow! Great blog, casseia
I agree, this is probably one of the most impressive blogs I've read by Kevin Barrett (I haven't really been paying too much attention to him for a while and was almost ready to write him off). I have to totally agree with most of his points on this one.
I've been feeling for a while that the fringe truthers pushing outrageous speculative theories have been given a bit too much attention and that the damage they are doing to the movement has been blown out of proportion compared to some of the more subtle disinfo types who tend to prop up important parts of the OCT while coincidently spending an awful lot of time discrediting lots and lots of other 9/11 truthers, but Kevin Barrett has finally articulated the situation perfectly.
Victronix (Victoria Ashley) and partner Jim Hoffman seem to be spending about 75% of their time attacking and discrediting other 9/11 truthers/researchers. They seem to be so intent and so quick to discover and expose any and every possible association or biographical detail (whether proven or unproven) that might discredit the person that I often feel like they are actually doing the job of the OCT defenders' professional debunkers. With 9/11 "truther" debunkers on "our" side like these, who needs real enemy debunkers? Case in point: Jim Hoffman's trojan horse "rebuttal" of Popular Mechanic's hit piece from 2006, in which Hoffman basically agreed with many (a little to many) of Popular Mechanic's debunking claims, including the issues with cell phone calls, the pentagon attack, etc., while claiming to be helping our cause.
If anyone hasn't seen Jim Hoffman's critique of 9/11 Mysteries yet, I highly recommend people check it out: 911 Mysteries AND FACTS. Some of Hoffman's rebuttals and counter-points to certain claims in 911mysteries are rather...um...interesting, shall we say. For example, in response to the claim in 911mysteries that the twin towers collapsed in 8 to 10 seconds, Hoffman claims that, "Contrary to this popular misconception the Twin Towers each took about 15-18 seconds to come down." If you follow a link to where Hoffman expands on this claim, you see where he debunks the 10 second claims and then counter-claims that it is 15-18 seconds - much slower than free fall - but provides pretty weak proof in my opinion. As Hoffman chips away little by little at many of the most important claims within the movement that proves a controlled demolition, such as this example of the collapse time, one might suspect that at some point in the future the case for controlled demolition might be downgraded by Hoffman from "proven" to merely "probable", which would be the first step to eventually claiming that the OCT fire-theory is possible, which would be the first step to...well, you get the point.
The discussion about emotional vs logical persuasion is interesting. The idea that it may take an emotional type of shock to wake people out of the original emotionally-induced blindness is an interesting one. I can certainly see where this could make sense, but I think it is a bit more complicated than the simple theory that an emotional-induced mind-fuck requires an emotional-induced antidote, whereas a logical-induced mind-fuck (if there is such a thing) requires a logical-induced antidote. The complexity I see is that different people's minds work differently. Some people are more convinced by factual/scientific evidence, whereas others are more convinced by intuitive/emotional evidence. One thing that's obvious is that WE NEED MORE RESEARCH IN THIS AREA.
Since our goal is to reach the not-yet-converted, we ought to do some surveys to find out how people's interest was stimulated in 9/11 truth.
YES! YES! YES!
Oh, by the way, for all the concern people like Victronix, Arabesque, TruthMove, and Hoffman constantly express about how "junk science" and "bad arguments" are holding back the movement, some of the surveys that WERE done actually contradict what they say. For example, all of them argue that the idea, or the very impolite term of "Hoax" as they like to say, that a Boeing 757 didn't crash into the Pentagon is hurting the movement turns reality upside down, as the "missing 757 at the Pentagon" is one of the most common aspects of 9/11 that woke people up to the cover-up, according to surveys done in 2006. They never seem to address this fact. For anyone in the movement who appoints themselves truth police protecting the movement from bad arguments, such as these folks, you'd think that they would be a little more interested in this kind of research and would be running surveys, at least once in a while. I think this is a good argument to throw back at those types whenever they are attempting to speak for the whole movement regarding what evidence or discussions should be shut down or discouraged, wouldn't you say?
The research has been done.
The research has been done. The emotional areas of the brain are in the limbic system. google it. Logic and rule based thinking are up in the left frontal portion of the brain. The reliance upon the systems varies from one person to the next. Unfortunately most people can be convinced using emotional arguments. All you have to do is watch the pre election nonsense. I'm thinking the globalists will make a big move before election day. I'd be prepared if I were all of you. :(
citation for the brain-imaging research (& others if poss.)
Pretty please.
BTW, what makes you think there's going to be an election? (And what does 'election' mean anyway? They don't need a big event to swing the vote; they've got DIEBOLD!)
Sincerely,
E
Thanks for the laugh
Highly representative of the uberparanoid brainrot to be found on this site. A crackhead like Barrett who frequently promotes the most nonsensical material available (Wood, Reynolds, Fetzer) gets mad props while someone who has actually made solid, lasting contributions to the movement is a secret agent. Jim Hoffman has probably done more work to establish the case for demolitions than anyone else - Jones and Gage wouldn't even be involved if it weren't for his contributions (a fact they frequently acknowledge). But really it's all been a plot to cover up the demolitions all along... VERY TRICKY!
I'm not sure if you guys could make yourselves any more useless.
FWAP!!
Gee, did that hurt? Your knee jerking like that?
The annoymouse doesn't acknowledge that quite number of folks have started out making positive contributions and then gone Fetzal, as we say -- past performance is no guarantee of future results. But by all means, completely ignore the substance of Kevin's comments and focus on "uberparanoid brainrot".
You're not sure if we could be anymore useless and yet you feel compelled to read and comment here -- here's an alternative you may not have thought of: fuck off.
I doubt it, Cass. No brain, no pain, ya' know.
See you gotta' have some brain matter before the rot can set in. I guess these truefaction parrots think they're doing the movement a great service by following Barret around like stalkers & pointing out the painfully obvious.
Now, parrot, would you like to add to the discussion of how we can be more effective in spreading the truth?
If I didn't know better, I'd
If I didn't know better, I'd say this sounds like, gulp, Jon Gold!
E
Hi to Wh. and Ke., Excellent blog and thread, Casseia. Thanks
also for your excellent and interesting commentary. I am proud of Professor Barrett for this. I too was wondering what was exactly happening with him, and which side of the pool he would come out on. This is an excellent post by him, and there is good wisdom in it. It is my hope that Kevin will always consult the wisdom of his heart and his Faith to do what is right for truth, and to act always with compassion, which I think he does and is trying to do, as we all are.
And good luck on your Master’s work, btw. The finish line is near. Here, we pray for Springtime and sunglasses.
Regarding the Jim Hoffman controversy though, this whole 9/11 operation, and especially its cover-up phase, definitely seems to be based on the psychological modus operandi of the “Emperor who wears no clothes.†For example:
A) Three steel-framed, overly engineered skyscrapers collapse, all on the same day, all in the same area, all at near, free-fall speed or faster, and all owned/leased and insured by the same man. Our eyes saw the reality of the collapses on that day, yet the paid crowd unanimously, like a chorus, declared that what we saw was not what we saw, and that all the empirical and mathematical evidence which backs up our collective and individual perceptions of those imploding collapses is also not to be trusted. The paid and fearful crowd declares the King stands fully clothed, and that the shouting, trouble-making people in the back of that crowd who trust their eyes, people like Willie Nelson, are trying to trick you into buying a stopwatch and then watching those darn pesky videos of Larry and the boys blowin’ up their own buildings for trucks of cash and Israel. Sadly, it seems that Jim Hoffman’s stopwatch has been paid to run the race a little slower than regular stopwatches, or perhaps the “slow-mo option†on his VCR may also be “accidentally†programmed as an operational play-back default. Who knows.
B) From the perfectly round cruise missile-type hole left inside the Pentagon’s C-ring, it certainly appears that the specially reinforced part of the Pentagon, where the Accounting Department (wink wink, nudge nudge) was located, had been hit by what could turn out in the end to be a U.S. cruise missile. Aerial shots of the Pentagon ‘hit-spot’ on 9/11/01 show no Boeing 757 whatsoever, and there are at least 80 video angles of this “terrorist attack,†yet the public is, for some unknown classified reason, not allowed to see these videos (See also: [if you can] the FBI’s confiscated, and still unreleased, video tapes from the OKC bombing. Who was that man of “middle eastern†appearance anyways?). And yet again, the paid crowd screams, “the Emperor is fully clothed!â€
The unqualified, ambitious and lying lads of Poplar Mechanics tell us that the atomic structure of the huge Boeing 757 was somehow liquefied by the impact (yet full passenger DNA was somehow still available), and that is why we mortals can’t see the Boeing 757 at the Pentagon. This is yet another “9/11 first†in the field of theoretical physics. September 11, 2001 – Truly a day that will be remembered as the day that general and specific laws of nature and laws of physics were temporarily suspended for some mysterious, classified reason. Are we to also suspend our classically founded, rational modern educations and assign magical powers to Shaykh Bin Ladin and his cocaine-snorting, “D to C-minus“ Cessna flyboys? Two planes hit, but Three buildings fall?!? The power of Allah as kerosene? Meanwhile, NORAD was on the job, protecting our Alaskan frontier, but we now know that if the Soviet MIGs had turned off their transponders, we would have been fucking toast – “Damn unreliable Israeli software, that’s what it is I tellya. It’s the damn plugs. Wrong size.†Operation Northern Vigilance – You gotta love the creative names these folks come up with. LO f*#g L
C) Although we now know that none of the renowned 19 al-Quesadilla hijackers could fly, especially young Hani Hanjour, “the Emperor’s Crowd†still proclaims the Emperor to be fully clothed, and carries on about Hanjour being able to hit the Pentagon like an ace, F-16 fighter pilot, and that earlier in the day, “Dumb and Dumber†were able to get back-to-back hits on the upper sections of “two spires at a distance†using big, lumbering Boeing 757s at high speed. These same maneuvers, however, attempted in an actual Boeing simulator, took already experienced pilots in a professional Boeing training program, as well as their flight trainer, Dan Govatos, ten or more tries to hit the towers. All of these experienced pilots in the Boeing program didn’t even get one hit. Their trainer, Pilots for 9/11 Truth co-founder, Dan Govatos hit one of the towers on his tenth attempt. Mossadmed Atta and his crew didn’t hijack or fly anything on 9/11/01. The professionals took control of the operation, turned on the guidance signals in the towers, flipped on the FTS modules, and the patsies were ferried out of the country to be killed later. That’s how these things usually work.
For the full story and audio interview with Dan Govatos and Rob Balsamo of Pilots for 9/11 Truth go to: http://z9.invisionfree.com/Pilots_For_Truth/index.php?showtopic=6819
Although I do not believe in “demons†in the mythical or religious sense, I nonetheless still feel that the people who are involved in this 9/11 operation and its resultant “War on Terror†could be described as psychopathic and sociopathic humans possessed of a ‘demonic consciousness’.
Hey Whitey,
Nice to see you here. I have always greatly appreciated your commentary over at 911B. Thanks for contributing here, and there. Only ‘the good’ survive, or so I hear.
Keenan, your new avatar is excellento, although I will sort of miss the other one out of historical, sentimental reasons (I have a large jpg version, don’t worry). I remember when you debuted it at 911B. Wowee! I thought, “we are all going to get thrown outta the house for sure now.†But all is good and for the best sometimes. Most people are used to reading about history, not participating in it. Thanks for your help.
And here’s something archaeologically interesting about Israel and the ancient solar symbol of the svastika (Sanskrit for “auspicious markingâ€). Hebrew scribes and scholars picked it up as a sacred solar symbol of cyclical eternity when they were in Babylonia, employed at “the Palace†during “the Exile†(582-539 BCE). Long story short, there exists an early Greek period synagogue in Ein Gedi by the southern Dead Sea that has a tiled floor displaying – that’s correcto – a Large svastika design. I have a B&W photo. Nice mosaic tile work too. That ancient Mesopotamian solar symbol, which the Persians and Hindus also later borrowed and called a svastika or swastika, also has a special name in ancient Hebrew, but I can’t remember it off-hand right now. I’ll have to look it up again. Later on that. Also, long story short, Hitler’s adoption of this ancient symbol as the Logo-of choice representing Nazi nationalism and its concomitant Aryan mythological associations, ruined a really great and ingenious, globally popular for millennia, ancient compact graphic design explaining the cyclical nature of the sun and time itself. Still today in India, the swastika is painted on pots placed outside the doorways of houses for good luck and agricultural prosperity during seasonal religious festivals. Sun, water, and land. Food does not come from supermarkets and corner stores.
Unfortunately, as you alluded to Keenan, one of the characteristics of “movements†of any sort is that they will oftentimes be led by the “self-appointed†spokespeople of the organizers, who in fact do not always speak for the majority (see the Bar Kokba Rebellion or the modern Zionist movement as prime examples of this), yet still retain control over the structure and public “face†of the “organization†or “movement.â€
Also – Thanks to all the blogger-people on this thread for your thoughts and comments. Great stuff anonymice.
Ciao,
Lazlo
a tour de force, as usual
I always learn something from your posts, Lazlo. Your posts, however, always leave me with a bad case of cognitive dissonance, because of the priest picture. I know you're being ironic, but my catholic upbringing left scars.
Oh yeah - religion, the biggest myth of all! How could I forget??
E
Thanks E-Vero for reminding me about changing avatars,
I just had to take the time out and do a little Photoshop work. The photo is mighty powerful and symbolic. One lone Palestinian woman taking on the Israeli Regime in the form of a gigantic, bullet-proof Caterpillar bulldozer. I thought going with the general tank theme currently being used here (Gretavo and Big D) would add a little more politico-graphic punch to the mix. I was already thinking about retiring Don Novello’s Guido Sarducci priest character (aka Lazlo Toth), although he might come back later in a less stern-looking form. Don Novello is a very sweet and funny guy. He lives somewhere out in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sorry to hear about your capture and subsequent torture under the Catholic school system. I have several friends who also underwent such things. I have heard all the stories. Anyways, E thanks for your support and for your dedication to helping your countrymen. Hope this new avatar is less scary for you, and a bit more inspiring.
All the best,
Lazlo
The new avatar is entirely
The new avatar is entirely appropriate.
FYI, I never went to catholic school (although my sibs did), but I had to endure weekly catachism, confession, church, and all the attendant shame/guilt. And I really loved the guido sarducci character on SNL -- anyone who makes fun of the catholic church is okay by me. The weird part is that your writing attracts me and feeling attracted to a priest is a pretty deep-seated taboo... the thornbirds all over again (book not movie)! There I said it. Anyway, I agree it's time for something new.
(Now I am feeling the pressure to look around for something new. I was so lazy and took so long, that Gretavo gave me this one in the first place!)
E
miss casseia question please
How you say plunge upward is not plunge down? Scary once had to plunge upward on an acrobatic military plane that he was posing as plumber of in first mission... you should ask he tell you story...
Do you get "The Simpsons" in Israel?
Do you remember the episode that recapitulated "The Poseidon Adventure", featuring Homer's unparalleled "butt suction"?